Mariela Scafati

We are excited to announce the opening of Mariela Scafati's upcoming solo exhibition Pintura, Pintura, Pintura, at Travesía Cuatro GDL.

“Color and geometric patterns are the elements through which atmosphere and time are preserved in Scafati’s work,and through which the language of painting is turned into a way of summing up every type of artistic experience. They take center stage. But they have opposing roles, and they form a tangled plot that regularly causes both hesitation and sudden moments of decision and certainty.[…] There are, above all, two recurrent moods around painting; two big systems of metaphors, two ideological dimensions that give structure to her work: on the one hand, a dimension linked with communication, externalization and empathy, which lifts the painting out of itself, turning it into a form of visual intelligence capable of translation ad infinitum to any medium whatsoever.[…] In Scafati’s output many possible works and personalities converge: some more chromatic, others more projective; some more pictorial and intimate, others more serigraphic and spilling over into the external world. Scafati’s painting, a focus of disagreement between two godlike guardians, embodied the drama of this internal theater. But the god of serigraphy and interconnection slowly begins to make peace with its rival, the genie of melancholy and self-awareness. Once again, it is in the painting that one finds the problem and the solution.”

– Excerpt from the text "The Complicated Environment of Being" by Claudio Iglesias for the catalog Mariela Scafati: Paintings Where I Am.

Painter and screen printer, Mariela Scafati (1973. Buenos Aires, Argentina) lives and works in Buenos Aires, Argentina.Among her most recent projects are Beijo, a duo exhibition by Mariela Scafati and Hélio Oiticica, at Pivô, São Paulo and the group exhibition Lo que la noche le cuenta al día at the Museum of Contemporary Art of the Province, Mar de Plata, Argentina.

Her work has been exhibited in solo and group shows at MASP, São Paulo; MALBA, Buenos Aires; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires; PAC, Milan, Italy; the KW Institute for Contemporary Art (as part of the 11th Berlin Biennale); Collegium, Arévalo, Spain; Storefront for Art and Architecture, NY; and Isla Flotante Gallery, Buenos Aires, among others.She also took part in Documenta Fifteen with the project Rancho Cuis, as a member of Serigrafistas Queer, a group that create slogans to print on t-shirts to use at LGBTQIA+ pride marches and transfeminist demonstrations. Since 2013, she has been part of Cromoactivismo (together with artists Daiana Rose, Marina De Caro, Vic Musotto and Guille Mongan), a group that uses color to intervene poetically in political events.

Among other collaborative projects related to screenprinting, education, performance and radio, Scafati is cofounder of Taller popular de Serigrafía (TPS); she was part of Belleza y Felicidad; in 2014 she made the performance Ni verdaderas ni falsas with TPS and Serigrafistas Queer t-shirts, that was also presented in 2022 in Reina Sofía Museum in the context of Giro gráfico exhibition; she created Radio Electrónica Artesanal together with Lola Granillo.Scafati’s work is part of institutional collections such as the NationalGalerie, Berlin; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY; Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; Reina Sofía National Art Center Museum, Madrid; MCA - Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; MALBA, Buenos Aires; MACBA - Museum of Contemporary Art of Buenos Aires; MAC - Museum of Contemporary Art of Bahía Blanca, Argentina.

— Travesía Cuatro