A-dorar / A-tesorar

Micaela Trucco is an artist from La Plata, her  project A-dorar / A-tesorar was selected through the Semillero 2017 open call, and was presented on December 7th within an ´aceNITE event. That same night were presented the projects of the artists in residence Young Joo Yoo and Young-gle Keem (South Korea) and the Argentinean artist Eugenia Foguel, who received the PATA-ACE-PANAL scholarship for summer seminars in Poland.

A-DORAR / A-TESORAR (by Micaela Trucco)

Mnemonic supplement that investigates the possibilities of a work of art to build a memory archive. In this case, a group of older women. From the format of the interview, there are two specific orders that provide information to delineate a map that intends to cross temporalities.

This project was born from my work as an art teacher in a neurocognitive rehabilitation center for older adults. During 2 years I worked in stimulating and favoring the cognitive development of people between 65 and 85 years old. Most of my proposals were aimed at reducing the problem of feeling of memory loss, a recurrent symptom in most patients. The group was largely composed of women who, due to their higher life expectancy, usually attend spaces destined for the elderly.

Before leaving that place, I decided that I wanted to take some of that experience with me. Then I recorded precarious interviews of stories. I worked with an approximate group of 15 women and asked them for a memory of their lives and a tip for mine. This archive of memories and advice is built from working with others. It is in the instance where I ask and women access to this request, that I can begin to put together a story as a knowledge material. And it is from the viewer that they choose a council with which they feel empathy, that the work continues in others and expands.

Memories
The project is an experience of listening and selecting memories of others.
From a dictionary definition, memory is the ability to remember. The image or set of images, of past events or situations that remain in the mind. Memories can then be constructed as images of the past more or less close that are stored in memory and serve to bring something or someone to the present.
This project puts the emphasis on rescuing stories through remembrance. Tell an anecdote, something significant for each of the women interviewed and from that moment of meeting, work to rescue it together from oblivion.

The advices
Advice, opinion that is issued or received to do (or not) something. The advice is a judgment, the belief or the consultation referred to an action or a fact. In the request for advice and in the response, you can perceive what the parties want.
In the action I proposed, advice emerged conditioned by my personal life situation and most of them are related to private and loving life. These speak of a woman’s idea, of her own wishes fulfilled or not.

The ex voto as continuity
The word exvoto comes from the Latin and means “the vow made”. It is an offering or memory left by the faithful who have received a gift or healing as a way of thanking towards a divinity. They are images that speak of the problem and the benefit received, giving testimony of what happened. They take different forms, paintings, objects, medals, sculptures and sometimes they include texts.
I think of my work A – gild / A – treasure. Mnemonic supplement as an offering / tribute to the stories received. A consequence of my request.