A very long night
Maria Velasco

On May 23rd the exhibition A Very Long Night by the Spanish artist Maria Velasco opened in the Polyglot Hall of the ´ace´s house.

A very long night (by Alicia Candiani)

María Velasco is a Spanish artist who has resided in the United States for the past year, specifically in the MidWestern heart of the country (Lawrence, Kansas), a land that popular imagery associates with Wild West films, cattle and cowboys. However, the bridge formed by the cities of Lawrence and Kansas City (on both sides of the same river) is currently a hotbed of places and proposals for the arts, among which the Atkins Museum (with its new dedicated building of contemporary art), the Spencer Museum, Kemper Museum and the all-new Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, artist residencies offered by the Kansas City Art Coalition (KCAC) and Grand Arts (with a focus on sculpture or the production of three-dimensional works) and the Lawrence Lithography Workshop (in the field of graphics), which are joined by prestigious educational institutions such as the Kansas City Art Institute (with 150 years of existence) and the University of Kansas at Lawrence.

In this project María, from the perspective of a contemporary artist, makes use of that collective imaginary about the region in which she has lived for 20 years and underneath the apparent innocence of the images she uses -in the manner of an oxymoron- brings us a hot topic in the Argentine and world media: sexual abuse of minors. Performed most of the time by those members of their closest environment, these abuses carry the chilling paradox that those who have the mission of caring for them are the ones who cause irreversible damage. We adhere to this project that becomes one more channel to draw attention to this problem that affects society as a whole.