That is a Woman
The weedding dress of the poet Delmira Agustini
"That is a woman", words that Rubén Darío wrote in 1913 in his own handwriting for the prologue to Los Cálices Vacíos: "changing the phrase Shakespe are, one could say that is a woman..." referring to the poet. Photograms of Delmira Agustini's wedding dress, worn by the poet Delmira Agustini, used on 14 August 1913. Created by contact between the dress and the emulsified paper by striking it with light in the dark. The gender is the raw material of the work. The camera is absent like her body, the search for its trace is in essence the trace of light on the photosensitive paper, a latent image that must be preserved in the dark until it is revealed, an analogy of the gender violence that survives hidden in intimacy.
The photographic emulsion in contact with the garment, like the skin of the person who wore the dress, was in contact with the murderer. A wedding dress, the dream of many.
Delmira, murdered by her ex-husband in 1914, like many today are murdered by men with whom they were in a relationship. The Brussels lace, composed of pieces made by different hands that are joined together with pins to make the final design, evokes the network of violence behind each feminicide*, contradicting the concept of a crime of passion. Like the fine linen threads that generate patterns, the networks construct the concept of gender and can also propose new structures/non-structures in our contemporaneity.
The art work was created in the literary archive of the National Library of Uruguay. The digital record of the creative process is part of the work, the digital photography narrates the realization of a photographic technique of the early '900, an investigation where what seems old and outdated touches with our present time.
Work selected for the 48th Montevideo Award for Visual Arts.
