Desafinados

This series arose from reading Concierto para instrumentos desafinados, a psychiatrist’s account of Spanish asylums in the 1950s. The book prompted a visit to two public psychiatric institutions near Rosario, an experience that gave rise to Desafinados (Rosario, 1985), a group exhibition followed years later by Desafinados II (Rosario and Buenos Aires, 2001–2002).

With bodies made of interwoven strips of canvas and heads, hands and feet modelled in papier-mâché, his characters appear trapped in wheelchairs, tied up or confined in jars. The works address confinement and exclusion with deep respect for those who endure them. In the aftermath of the Argentine dictatorship, these figures could also call to mind the victims of state repression.