The collaboration between Bárbara Sánchez-Kane and Sofía Alazraki (Buenos Aires, Argentina) began as an exchange of letters between two friends. These were love letters in strange formats—pieces of fabric and objects—like throwing a dart back and forth across the world. What began as a playful, intuitive, and fun exchange slowly evolved into something deeper, until they found a shared point of connection between their two practices, which, though distinct, inhabit a common territory: the mechanism of fashion.
On one hand, they are interested in exploring how fashion objects circulate and what truly generates desire for them. On the other, they are fascinated by that democratic attribute: the art that goes into a garment finds its way onto the streets, like two spies infiltrating the city.
There is also something deeply political in this work. We live in a time of crisis, authoritarian regressions, structural precariousness, and material impulses. In a present where images and language are oversaturated and polarized, where spaces are shrinking due to agendas of hate, this exhibition proposes a fissure: a place where we can play without asking for permission, remember without chronological order, and kiss as if it were the first time. The rupture is the form.
The objects we see in this series of photos are erotic cyborgs with diverse origins. Some were purchased in the street markets of Mexico City, which they explored with the spirit of two girls who become aroused in a hardware store. Others come from a personal archive of things whose usefulness was uncertain; abandoned objects from previous projects, unfinished objects that were going to do something, and in the end did not. Still others originated from an impulsive purchase on online sites of dubious provenance. Many of the objects arrived at the studio as gambles that could disappoint or, at best, exceed expectations.
The images that emerge from this collaboration function as exquisite corpses: photographic sculptures assembled from fragments that do not follow a linear narrative logic. Sometimes they look like little Frankenstein's, made with borrowed parts to animate a strange animal; other times, they have the humor of collage, of the burst of laughter caused by the juxtaposition of two contradictory things. As they are made with used objects, they also raise the question of what past they may have had, and what future awaits them.
Text by Guillermo Osorno