Gabriela Bettini
The project explores the history and contemporary repercussions of the designation of territories as deserts, a ploy historically used to justify the exploitation of land and natural resources. The artist’s oil paintings on paper and canvas examine how this concept has perpetuated an androcentric approach to nature, treating it as a mere resource from which energy and minerals can be extracted. Taking an ecofeminist stance, she proposes an alternative way of understanding biodiversity, highlighting the interdependence between loving beings and knowledge.
Dissimulating is the Name of the Game alludes to camouflage and mimicry as strategies for survival in nature and cultural resistance, and to tactics of invisibility to bring about change without having to resort to direct confrontation. The project furthermore proposes a poetic narrative in which the living beings affected by extractivism defy the politics of exploitation by voluntarily camouflaging themselves in order to survive.
BIO
The work of Gabriela Bettini ((Madrid, 1977) has been included in the collections of the Reina Sofía Museum, Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Jumex, MAC, CA2M, DKV, BASMOCA, the Caja de Extremadura Foundation and the Spanish Academy in Rome. She has held exhibitions at BIENALSUR 2023 (Brazil), the European Parliament, Paço Imperial Río de Janeiro, the Mariano Moreno National Library (Buenos Aires); the Cerezales Foundation; Naves de Gamazo; the Haroldo Conti Cultural Centre for Memory (Buenos Aires); the Tlatelolco Cultural Centre (Mexico) and TEA. She has received numerous prizes: the Derivada Award (2020), the Community of Madrid Award for Artistic Creation (2023, 2020, 2017), the Ministry of Culture Award for Artistic Creation (2020); DKV (2019); the Caja de Extremadura Open Work Prize - 1st Prize - (2017) and the MAEC-AECID Scholarships (Rome, 2015).
One of the recipients of the 2024 Quarterly Residencies for Projects on the Environment for visual artists at Matadero Madrid’s Centre for Artists in Residence.