Nicola Costurera [Nicola Seamstress]

Primary Nicola Costantino (Rosario, Argentina, 1964–Buenos Aires, Argentina, present)

NationalityArgentinean, South America

Date2008

MediumInkjet

DimensionsAdditional Dimension: 49 × 41 in. (124.5 × 104.1 cm)
Framed: 59 × 43 in. (149.9 × 109.2 cm)

Credit LineBlanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, Purchase through the Pinta Museum Acquisition Program with generosity from the Arts Connection Foundation, Gail and Louis Adler, Michael Chesser, and Melissa Jones, 2009.19

Keywords

Rights Statement

IN COPYRIGHT

Collection AreaLatin American Art

Object number2009.19

On View

Not on view

Collection Highlight

Latin American Art: 1970–present

Label Text

Web Comments

Nicola Costantino often finds uncanny ways to address her childhood in her work, in this case, her mother’s profession as a seamstress. Costantino mediates her nostalgic view through a complex filter combining self-portraiture, photographic performance, and a reference to Primeros pasos [First Steps], a famous 1937 painting by Argentine artist Antonio Berni depicting his wife sewing while their daughter dances by her side. In a dramatically lit night scene, Nicola costurera depicts the artist herself as a seamstress sitting by her mother’s 1960s sewing machine. The mysterious tableau seems eerily suspended in time, a moment in the still of the night when the main character weighs the two options before her: to wear the bride’s virginal white dress, or to follow the life of passion symbolized by the red fabric on the machine in front of her. During the twentieth century, sewing was a way for Argentine women to reach relative economic and sexual independence. In this subtly unsettling self-portrait, Constantino seems to suggest that reaching such goals required difficult choices.

Exhibitions

New Works for the Collection

Luminous: 50 Years of Collecting Prints and Drawings at the Blanton

About Face: Portraiture as Subject