Breathings, since 2024

Iván Argote’s Breathings series proposes a collective call: an invitation to interrupt the accelerated rhythm of everyday life in order to breathe and reflect on how we live in community. Silk—a light, mobile support, almost like a skin that reacts to the air—functions as a porous membrane that “breathes” with the works. On its surface, Argote creates paintings and silkscreens in which capital letters form socially and historically charged phrases, interwoven with delicate botanical drawings. In this Portuguese version, the message “O PONTO DE ENCONTRO” [The Meeting Point] evokes the need for accessible and welcoming spaces, particularly in the artistic field. In other works from the series, statements such as “A PLACE FOR ALL OF US” and “WE’RE HERE TOGETHER” appear, prompting reflections on how we occupy and experience collective space. Argote’s work investigates the relationships between history, politics, and subjectivity by discussing notions of power, heritage, and memory, and by re-signifying the systems that shape the idea of culture—such as museums, monuments, and official narratives. In the work Descanso, presented at the 60th Biennale di Venezia, plants grow over fragments of a replica of a sculpture of Christopher Columbus (1451–1506), shown toppled on the ground—suggesting rebirth and the possibility of reconstructed futures. By thinking of public space as a site of dispute, but also of care, Argote invites us to build more egalitarian forms of coexistence. The strength of these everyday gestures—like plants that insist on growing over ruins—reappears in The Other, Me, and the Others, an installation of monumental seesaws in MASP’s Free Span (2025–26), where the public collectively experiences the power of shared action.

— Matheus de Andrade, Curatorial Assistant at MASP, São Paulo