Feliciano Centurión (1962–1996, Paraguay) was born in San Ignacio de las Misiones, Paraguay, in 1962 and settled in Argentina in 1974. Celebrated for his introspective work, he is best known for his embroidered and painted textiles that engaged with folk art and queer aesthetics, produced using repurposed cloth and often embellished with diaristic phrases. Centurión was part of the group of artists associated with the gallery of the Cultural Center Ricardo Rojas at the University of Buenos Aires in the 1990s and represented Paraguay in the fifth Havana Biennial in 1994. His first retrospective in the United States, Feliciano Centurión: Abrigo, was presented at Americas Society in New York in 2020.
Ñande Róga means “Our Home” in Guaraní, the primary language spoken in Paraguay since before colonial conquest. This language has two different ways of addressing the first-person plural. Ñande refers to an inclusive “we,” where everyone participates, whereas ore implies that some member of a social group has been left outside. This difference, which is absent in both Spanish and English, reveals an insightful understanding of community and belonging.
Inspired by this notion of collectivity, Ñande Róga reflects on the work of the Paraguayan artist Feliciano Centurión (b. 1962, San Ignacio, Paraguay; d. 1996, Buenos Aires, Argentina). His practice was profoundly influenced by the countryside of Paraguay, the underground cultural scene of Buenos Aires in the 1990s, and the queer and gay movements of post-dictatorship Argentina. By dwelling within and among the resonances of his various communities and interest in local crafts such as ñandutí textiles, his works evoke ideas around domesticity, care, healing, and spirituality.
The exhibition combines drawing, textile, and sculptural works with materials from Centurión’s archives, many of which have not been previously published or shown in a public exhibition. These materials provide a multifaceted perspective on Centurión’s studio practice, as well as his relationships with other artists and thinkers working in Buenos Aires and Asunción in the 1990s. For Centurión—a gay man living through the most tumultuous years of the AIDS crisis—the bonds of friendship made during this period were a powerful grounding force in both his work and his life. It is clear from the works and archival ephemera presented in Ñande Róga that Centurión’s work existed within that inclusive “we.” This linguistic nuance fueled the development of an exhibition system composed of concentric circles, with original artworks in the center and a perimeter of facsimiles (press clippings, documentary photographs, and notes) drawn from the Centurión archive at ISLAA.
The artworks, archival materials, and ephemera in Ñande Róga provide new perspectives through which to view the life and practices of Feliciano Centurión and his artistic communities.
Curated by Eduardo Andres Alfonso, Angelica Arbelaez, María Carri, Rachel Eboh, Laura Hakel, Kyle Herrington, and Guy Weltchek, with generous guidance from Karin Schneider and ISLAA.
ABOUT THE ISLAA RESEARCH SEMINAR INITIATIVE
The ISLAA Research Seminar Initiative works in partnership with academic institutions to support graduate seminars that culminate in student-organized exhibitions. Each seminar takes as its point of departure a special collection from ISLAA’s archives, inviting new research by emerging curators and encouraging critical engagements with the lived histories of Latin American artists and movements.
About The Artist(s)
Feliciano Centurión
Monica Girón
Mónica Giron (b. 1959 in Patagonia) received her diploma in three-dimensional expression and art proficiency from the School of Visual Arts in Geneva, Switzerland in 1984. She has a workshop in the city of Buenos Aires, and shows her work regularly in solo and group exhibitions. Giron lives passionately and is motivated by the challenge of understanding those deep questions relating to learning and cultural transmission. She leads an experimental practice and workshop on the interpretation of forms within a group and in the expanded field of art education.
About The Curator(s)
Eduardo Andres Alfonso
Eduardo Andres Alfonso is a graduate student at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College.
Angelica Arbelaez
Angelica Arbelaez is a graduate student at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College.
María Carri
María Carri is a graduate student at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College.
Rachel Eboh
Rachel Eboh is a graduate student at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College.
Laura Hakel
Laura Hakel is a graduate student at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College.
Kyle Herrington
Kyle Herrington is a graduate student at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College.
Guy Weltchek
Guy Weltchek is a graduate student at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College.
Karin Schneider
Karin Schneider is a Brazil-born and New York-based artist, teacher, and filmmaker. Her practice engages with programming, display mechanisms, and the creation of systems. In 1997, Schneider co-founded Union Gaucha Productions (UGP), an artist-run, experimental film company designed to carry out interdisciplinary collaborations with practitioners from different fields. From 2005 to 2008, she was a founding member of Orchard, a cooperatively organized exhibition and social gathering space in New York’s Lower East Side. From 2010 to 2014, Schneider co-founded Cage, a venue that facilitated practices and frameworks of negation via the constant rearrangement of social interactions. In 2019 she co-founded Ortvi, a streaming platform for time-based art that creates a collective economy that redirects profits to participating artists and programmers. Schneider is a faculty member at the Yale School of Art.