Argentine Photography and Mediatization of Contemporary Art. Construction of National Myths in Exhibition Projects Expanded on the Web

Abstract

The acceleration of the production, circulation, and consumption of images in the digital age made the visual modes of conception more complex. In this framework, this study analyzes the media expansion of two Argentine photography exhibitions displayed at the Kirchner Cultural Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and the Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, United States, between 2016 and 2018. The study approach constitutes the visual studies perspective on the basis of semiotics, aesthetics, and the history of photography. The study analysis notes that both exhibitions discuss the digital position of photographic imagery and revisit the founding texts of modern Argentina, thus giving them new meanings between the room and the Internet; they propose a dialog and image montage that in their folds subverts the senses instituted around natives and gaucho stereotypes, among other mythical figures from Argentina. In CCK’s “Ser Nacional” show, López as a visual artist and curator explores expanded photography and develops reduplications of semantic zones with rhetorical effects that he then projects, intensifies, and resignifies on his personal Instagram profile posts. In addition, the Getty institutional website works as a meta-medium and hyper-device that broadens the horizons of the “Photography in Argentina, 1850–2010: Contradiction and Continuity” exhibition toward new devices and interfaces.