Zona Imaginara: Relational Residencies

Art as a Cultural Bridge

An interview by Luz Hitters

November 2021

Lucrecia Urbano is an artist and director of an unconventional project. She is a graduate in fine arts but admits that life trained her to develop and direct Zona Imaginaria, a self-managed space in constant reinvention.

Formally opened in 2008, Zona Imaginaria is located in the neighbourhood of Villa Jardín, in the province of Buenos Aires. Since its opening, it has played a dynamic role, managing itself with total freedom and listening to the needs of the neighbourhood, the artists and society. To define Lucrecia's work is a challenge, as it would be to crystallise a project with a life of its own, in constant development and adaptation. What I dare say is that Zona Imaginaria successfully achieves the goal that hundreds of museums and art institutions declare in their vision: to use art to create cultural bridges.

In its complexity lies its admirable development and value. To visualise it, I would say that it is something like a Venn diagram, a synthesis between cultural centre, artists' workshop, learning space and relational residence, but with an additional dimension that overcomes physical and temporal barriers. Zona Imaginaria manages to bring cultures together – literally – and change every person who passes through the house where it is established. Thus, its impact transcends borders and physical time.

Interviewing Lucrecia was an experience that profoundly changed my perspective on the role of institutions. Her proposal challenges the mandate in the cultural field to settle in gentrified areas in order to access the global market. It shows that much of what has been learned in cultural management is based on a conservative and inflexible vision, and that a simple place like a house can become the passport to hundreds of worlds.

LU: "With the artists of Zona we make studio visits and organise talks with actors from the art scene. For example, the other day we visited Mónica Girón. The young people's questions to Mónica were very interesting: they discussed the relationship with the public through social networks, in contrast to through institutions. Monica emphasised the importance of documentation and archiving".

LH: "You could say that nowadays the artist has become a kind of nomad. Residencies have essential in professional training".

LU: "Residencies have become a place of research, development and training. The artist thus chooses what they want to train in. For example, if they are interested in relational art, they come to a residency like Zona Imaginaria. The artist develops their career by making direct contacts, changing the axis and having a new interlocutor. By taking out of context something that perhaps worked in London, and putting it in Villa Jardín, for example, the artist has to rethink how to make that piece work.

Once a London-based artist, Camila Brendon, came to the residency and proposed a performance in which she would film herself in real time for a day from Argentina and share it with her workshop partner in London. What she did in Zona was projected in London, and what he did in London was cast in Zona. Actions like brushing their teeth, eating, checking emails and bathing. Everyday actions. And the kids in the neighbourhood would ask her: "Why did you come all the way from London if you do the same things you do there?" So she questioned the role of context and how it transforms you.”

The everyday plays an essential role in this project, starting from the fact that the residency programme is called 'Who can live in this house'. The residency in Zona does not make any demands, but is instead an invitation to live in Villa Jardín, aware that the artist's stay in the neighbourhood creates a profound impact on himself and the neighbours. Zona contrasts with a system of residencies analogous to the boom of art fairs and the marathon effort to be present at each event. Instead, it prioritises life experience in the knowledge that it will resonate in due course. The aim is not to create work that responds to place but rather to plant seeds and questions.

LU: It's a relational space. For example, Paola Sferco (Córdoba, 1974) was in Zona and says that her residency there brought about big change because there she created her work Boloñesa (2013), which was later selected for the São Paulo Biennial. At the time of making his videos she did not suspect the scope of the work. We even arranged a made-to-measure residency, as she had a young daughter and couldn't take so much time off. Hence, she came four times in a year to get to know the territory, think and work, until she settled on the videos in the kitchen of the house, which explore everyday life. It is a compelling video that marked part of her career. Zona is a space of search. It may be that the artist ends his residency with more doubts and questions than he arrives with". 

LH: “What was it like to start Zona Imaginaria and how was the process of integration with the local people?”

LU: “In 2007 I received money from my father, who died two years earlier, and I wanted my own workshop because I studied printmaking and researched non-toxic graphics. I had a giant plotter, an intaglio press, an insulator and different materials in my living room. I looked for a space so as to no longer be a "nomad" with the workshop on my back.

Once I was passing along Uruguay Avenue and saw a 'For Sale' sign in Villa Jardín, where I went often because I worked with carpenters there, among other trades. It was a house belonging to Don Félix from San Juan, from the same town as my father. I am very intuitive and decided that I was going to open my workshop there. I applied for a loan from the FNA to refurbish it, enlarge the workshop and build a photoengraving laboratory. This loan allowed me to get started.

While I was refurbishing the workshop, Don Félix introduced me to people and children from the neighbourhood, who asked me what that house was. When I replied that it was an art workshop, the children brought me their drawings and asked me to attend. Thus was born 'Pequeños aprendices' (little apprentices), which is the heart of the project. It is a free workshop for children between 6 and 15 years old from the neighbourhood.

Zona Imaginaria is 20 metres from San Isidro 'La Horqueta,' a neighbourhood of wealthier people that contrasts with an area of tradesmen. I wanted to erase this invisible border and create a bridge. Thus, the workshop 'Pequeños Aprendices' began to be sustained by integrating children from the surrounding public schools while inviting children from the Villa Jardín neighbourhood free of charge. In this way, art had a role in transformation and social impact.

 

At the same time, I began to develop the residency called 'Who can live in this house?” The symbolic act of living there is an artistic action in itself. Living there, producing, and relating to the community, the artists who visit the area and the activities in different workshops create a broth that reverberates in the neighbourhood, the community and the artists themselves. It is a subtle activity but, at the same time, a very profound one.

To sustain the space, I started giving photoengraving workshops and inviting others to give seminars. We have a photography workshop, engraving, ceramics, painting, artists' meetings, theoretical seminars, and we also invite people from the neighbourhood from the trades. The blacksmith, for example, is a star because he works with all the artists. The same goes for the carpenter. The whole community collaborates. One artist who worked with handmade paper agreed with the greengrocer, who collected onion and garlic peels for the paper workshop. There is an expectation in the neighbourhood about who is living in the house, where they come from, and a predisposition to accompany the artist.”

 LH: "It is very interesting that in the cultural field there is always talk about the role of art in integration and the creation of bridges that unite apparent differences. In practice, institutions do not manage to create this bridge because it is an artificial integration. In itself, an institution is not visited by a large part of the population, with an emphasis on less affluent areas. On the other hand, this project shows that there is a need for culture in a less orthodox way. When you came to the neighbourhood, the people themselves asked you to do this project".

LU: "I also started to think about how to approach it. At first, I opened the gate and people didn't come in. Then I decided to do a vegetable garden project on the pavement. This project was a way of including the grandparents, who passed on their ancestral knowledge to us: how to make a plant from a small slip or how to take care of certain vegetables. So we started to have a more familiar relationship.

To get to know the neighbourhood, we did specific projects with the children, talking about the myths of the neighbourhood and exploring the popular history of Villa Jardín through art. With the teenagers, on the other hand, we set up a photography project with Carolina Magnin (Argentina, 1975) and Julieta Escardo (Argentina, 1970) called 'Zona en Foco'. The people in the neighbourhood come from rural areas–from provinces like San Luis, Santiago del Estero, San Juan–who come to Buenos Aires to work. Many of them don't know each other. The girls from the neighbourhood went to interview the people from the area. They went into their houses and photographed their daily life, from their little saints to their decorations. We did an exhibition called Arte y Territorio with this material at the Haroldo Conti Cultural Centre of Memory. We took the living room of a house in Villa Jardín and put it in the institution. There was a telephone where you could listen to more than 24 hours of interviews with the residents of the neighbourhood".

The house has witnessed the development of Villa Jardin, from the first batch of 'Pequeños Aprendices' who became adults, to the confidence they have gained in handling new tools or the opportunities presented to them.

LU:  "Lara, for example, is a young woman who was part of the PA workshop and today is the teacher of this workshop hired by the municipality. She is studying art at the IUNA. 

We built this place together. It is a place of intersection where we enable children from private schools in the area to come and take screen-printing workshops in the neighbourhood, and children from the community to give classes in these same schools. Zona Imaginaria speaks of a neutral territory.

We also create collaborations with artists. We introduced 'Zona Lab' where artists from the neighbourhood who learned a craft – whether it's screen printing, ceramics, video – do work or collaborate with other artists."

The emphasis is on the exchange, learning from each other and creating constructive links through exposure to diverse perspectives. For the residency, local artists are usually paired with foreigners so that there is even greater enrichment. The aim is to create dialogues and fruitful coexistence.

Surprisingly, Zona has no language requirements. Communication between artists and with neighbours transcends linguistic limitations.

LU: "A Taiwanese artist, E-Shen Chen (Taiwan, 1983), who only spoke Chinese and English, came to Zona. As she didn't speak Spanish, she did sound project recording workshops. She communicated through sign language and taught the children to write their names in Chinese. She also had a lot of support from the Taiwanese community, which assigned her a translator. Before her residency, the kids in the neighbourhood were prejudiced, but then they learned about Taiwanese culture and changed their perspective. The (Taiwanese) community was so interested in the project that they invited Zona Imaginaria, including the 'pequeños aprendices', project to do a show in Chinatown and translated all the Zona texts into Chinese. A huge exhibition was organised with the ambassador, the FUC, and filmed for TV.

For another project, Umberto Giovannini (Morciano di Romagna, 1969) and Luca Rogna proposed 'el Ferrocarril' (the Railway), where they visited forgotten villages and places where the train used to pass in Argentina. As juggler artists they brought the Italian puppet 'Pulcinella' to play with the community. During their stay in Zona, the artists noticed that dogs are essential characters in the neighbourhood; every boy has his own dog and comes to Zona with him. So they prepared the script with the PA kids, and the characters were the neighbourhood's dogs. 

The kids cross the street and have someone from Taiwan or Italy. This exchange of culture makes the kids travel. You travel to get to know other cultures, and Zona brings cultures closer to home.

On the other hand, Ernesto Bonato (Sao Paolo, 1968) went out into the street every day and drew in a little notebook. He would give each kid who wanted to join him a notebook and a pencil. That's how he ended up drawing in the neighbourhood with ten kids. With that they made woodcuts that they used to build kites. The exhibition consisted of assembling the kites which were then flown in the air. Ernesto told me that, after many years, he only now realised the magnitude of the project. Metaphorically it is very profound: physically it was ephemeral, but it was an unforgettable experience".

Zona Imaginaria demonstrates that the institutions that generate the most impact are dynamic and constantly rethink their role. They do not conform to a static definition, nor do they establish arbitrary rules regarding the trajectories of their artists. They do not demand the production of a specific type of art, aware that the impact of artistic research has long-term repercussions.

Zona plants a seed that can become a profession for some, a way of living for others, an unforgettable experience, a new question or a profound change of perspective. It brings us closer to each other's culture and thus allows us to understand our own culture more deeply. These relationships effectively create cultural bridges that become great networks of exchange and remind us of what unites and traverses us.