The show works as an interrelated whole through a cyclical narrative articulated around the film La
Plaza del Chafleo [The Chaffling Square]. The verb «chaflear» a nonce word Argote has coined to
refer to actions that can be performed in a public square, such as gathering, sharing things, talking,
kissing, protesting, or simply being oneself.
Historically, squares have been meeting places, alternative spaces for participating, for learning
how to play, for socializing and for voicing, political views ; their origins can be traced back to the
Greek agora, an environment for citizens to congregate in, to discuss the laws, and to listen to the
town’s best orators. Argote, however, takes no particular delight in the references to authority or
to the standardized speeches that prevail in public debate ; rather, he attempts to provide a place
for new voices : those of children, of migrants, and of people on the margins of their society. His
work is directly linked with the political history of his native Colombia, but also with that of the
rest of the countries of Latin America and the other regions of the world in which he has worked.
Be it in Bogotá, Palembang, Paris or Douala, his career grapples with subverting established power
structures through the disruption—often comical—of their symbols and monuments. The various
operations he carries out in his exhibitions and interventions put patterns of authority into crisis ;
we might describe them, borrowing the words of the narrator of one of his videos, as the search for
a “decolonization of the mind” through tenderness.
