At PICA we recognise that we are situated within the unceded lands of the Whadjuk people of the Noongar Nation. We pay our respects and offer our gratitude to Elders past and present, and to those emerging leaders in the community. We acknowledge all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and the importance of their care and continued connection to culture, community and Country.

Always was, always will be.

We are closed today. Our exhibitions are always free.

Las Hormigas/The Ants — Pilar Mata Dupont

Las Hormigas/The Ants — Pilar Mata Dupont

Latinx visual artist and filmmaker Pilar Mata Dupont presents a vivid exploration of intergenerational storytelling and the fragmentation of memory in Las Hormigas/The Ants told across video, photography, and performance.

Influenced by her background and upbringing in the settler-colonial states of Brunei, Argentina and Australia, Mata Dupont uses dark, absurdist humour to reflect on her Argentinian family’s complicated past, and how trauma manifests over large geographical and temporal distances. Las Hormigas will be the most ambitious iteration of her highly personal body of work in which she attempts to distil and reconcile varying interpretations of her family’s histories and memories of 20th-century Argentina.

Across Las Hormigas, Mata Dupont’s works play out the complex, constantly unfolding process of remembering, forgetting, and rewriting history. The exhibition debuts a new performance and video installation drawing from the artist’s rich archive of her family’s history, assembled over a period of almost ten years. Presented in the adjoining galleries is La Maruja (2021) – a powerful series of large-scale photographs and a single-channel video, continuing her theatrical and cinematic explorations of magic realism, memory, trauma, motherhood, and the body.

La artista visual y cineasta latina Pilar Mata Dupont presenta una vívida exploración de la narración intergeneracional y la fragmentación de la memoria en “Las Hormigas / The Ants” contadas a través de video, fotografía y performance.

Influenciada por sus bagaje cultural y educación en los estados coloniales de Brunei, Argentina y Australia, Mata Dupont utiliza el humor oscuro y absurdo para reflexionar sobre el complicado pasado de su familia argentina y cómo el trauma se manifiesta a través de grandes distancias geográficas y temporales. “Las Hormigas” será la iteración más ambiciosa de su obra, que es altamente personal y que intenta destilar y reconciliar diversas interpretaciones de las historias y recuerdos de su familia de la Argentina del siglo 20.

A través de “Las Hormigas”, las obras de Mata Dupont representan el complejo y constante proceso de recordar, olvidar y reescribir la historia. Durante la exposición, se estrenará una nueva performance y una videoinstalación, ambas basadas en el gran archivo de la historia de su familia, reunido durante un período de casi diez años. En las galerías contiguas se presenta “La Maruja” (2021), una poderosa serie de fotografías a gran escala y un video de un solo canal, que continúa sus exploraciones teatrales y cinematográficas del realismo mágico, la memoria, el trauma, la maternidad y el cuerpo.

About the Artist

Pilar Mata Dupont (1981, Boorloo/Perth) is an Argentinean-Australian filmmaker and artist living and working in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Her art practice encompasses video, photography, and performance with a cinematic focus. She has shown her work in spaces such as Secession, Vienna; the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei; Seoul Museum of Art; Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart; TENT, Rotterdam; Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography; Samstag Museum of Art, Adelaide; and the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, USA. In 2015, she won the Plymouth Contemporary Open, UK, and a residency prize at the 19th Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil in São Paulo, Brazil. In 2010, she won the Basil Sellers Art Prize with Tarryn Gill. She received her Master’s degree from the Dutch Art Institute in 2016. Pilar is represented by Moore Contemporary.