GABRIEL BAGGIO

The recovery and transformation of stories and narratives, crafts and memory are some of the vectors that shape the artistic practice of Gabriel Baggio (b. 1974, Buenos Aires). 

In an increasingly globalized, technologized and specialized world, his performances are a signaling of symbols and cultural references that involve social, emotional, identitary and historical processes. In his actions, Baggio summons makers and artisans to perform a joint task that values manual workmanship and places the body in a central place, involving the public in the learning processes implied in each new dialogue. Baggio says: “I trust in experience as a liberating perspective of contemporary apathy.” And he adds: “It is possible to connect with another, enabled by a practice, so the work may be the excuse to establish a direct relationship with someone so and that from there things arise…. Historical traces, personalities or traits of another society to produce a sort of symbolic and vital resistance against the cultural homogenization of Capitalism.”

Throughout his career and in the development of both his object-based work and performance projects, Baggio has reflected on the figure of the artist in terms of the importance of the link with past generations and allowing human relationships to come to the forefront. To reason about history is, inseparably for him, to think about power structures. Those who have already “lived” discover the memorable in the face of the threat of oblivion, so that time does not annul the efforts of men and women.

Baggio has a degree in visual arts from Universidad Nacional de las Artes and also studied at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes Prilidiano Pueyrredón in Buenos Aires. He has been an artist-in-residence at Urra/Yaxs, Guatemala, TriangleArt Workshop, Hong Kong and has been invited by the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México to participate in Performagia’07, Mexico DF. He has also received the Unesco-Aschberg Grant for a four-month residency at the Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, Ireland.

He has been awarded the Salón Nacional´s First Prize in Ceramics (2019); the Second Prize of the Concurso de Artes Visuales del Fondo Nacional de las Artes (2016); the Grand Prize of Honor in Painting from UADE (2012); the First Prize at the Premio Klemm a las Artes Visuales (2009) and the Prize for artists under 35 years from the LX Salón Nacional de Rosario (2005).

He has presented exhibitions, projects and performances in numerous museums and institutions including Fundación OSDE, Buenos Aires; Fundación Klemm, Buenos Aires; Casa Nacional del Bicentenario, Buenos Aires; Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires; Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires; Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires; Fundación PROA, Buenos Aires; Museo Castagnino + MACRO, Rosario; World Bank of Washington; Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt;  1ra Bienal de las Américas, Denver; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Centro Simón I. Patiño, Santa Cruz de la Sierra; Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas; Museu de Arte Contemporanea de Niterói, Río de Janeiro, Centre d´exposition de Saint-Hyacinthe, Montreal, among others.  

In 2020, La Tarea was published, the first book that brings together his performative work of the last fifteen years. The publication was presented simultaneously with Matar y morir, Baggio’s first exhibition at HACHE.

In 2021, his work La pampa se ve desde adentro (2016) was included in the exhibition Fantasías Plebeyas at the Museo Nacional de Arte Decorativo, Buenos Aires as part of the Bienalsur program.

Work by the artist is held by the collections of MALBA – Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires; Museo Castagnino-MACRO, Rosario, Fundación Klemm, Buenos Aires, UADEart, Buenos Aires, Fundación Supervielle, Buenos Aires, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes Neuquén, among many private collections around the world.

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