Pausa transformacional [Transformational interval]

Pausa transformacional represents a combination of plaster casts of ancient works, depicting the head of a woman in the center, flanked by the heads of two men. All three busts have been cut both horizontally and vertically, and then reassembled into a new complex form. The piece belongs to a long series Marta Minujín called The Fall of Universal Myths that involved modifying reproductions of Greek and Roman statuary dedicated to gods like Venus, Nike, and Apollo. Minujín said, “At the beginning of the 1980s, I saw that we Argentines were so unsettled under the military dictatorship, that I began to work with . . . Greek, classical art.” To her, such interventions on canonical images not only questioned established myths, but also gave these artworks a way to grow and become more dynamic. Their fracture was symbolic of the times, when, in Minujín’s words, Argentines lived “in fragmentation and discontinuity.” The artist produced works like this in bronze and other media, usually in large editions that helped fund her performance art at home and abroad, a fundamental aspect of her international multimedia practice.