About the exhibition

12 July–10 September 2023

1A Nelsons Row, London, SW4 7JR

We visited the exhibition "Usos y Costumbres" by Argentinian artist Gabriel Chaile in collaboration with Laura Ojeda Bär at Studio Voltaire. Let's delve into how Chaile uses clay in a transformative way to bring people together, explore spirituality, and rethink archaeology.

Gabriel Chaile (1985) was born in San Miguel de Tucumán, in the northwest of Argentina. There, he was immersed not only in a world of adobe in its architectural use but also in a world influenced by local pre-Columbian cultures.

Earth is considered a highly significant material in the history of Argentine architecture, as it has been used since the earliest human settlements in the area up to the present day. Indeed, earth and the use of adobe have become witnesses to Argentina's history, leaving their mark on the walls of homes and buildings. The most popular technique in Argentina has been the use of adobe blocks. Archaeological studies and still-visible sites in Argentina provide evidence to demonstrate the antiquity of this technique, showing hand-molded adobe blocks. Additionally, spherical forms can be found in rural constructions. Most notably, numerous constructions can be seen nowadays that use adobe blocks that were molded with wooden boards and pressure, such as churches, houses, hospitals, among others.

House Gerarda Chavarría de Mamaní, El Rincón. Image credit: Universidad Nacional de Tucumán.

In the northwest of Argentina, the first Taffí settlements are evident around 300 B.C. One of the most notable characteristics of this pre-Columbian culture is the circularly distributed constructions around a central axis, the latter being built in stone. This feature, with possible spiritual interpretations, constitutes a fundamental element for understanding how communities settled and understanding the model of a circle whose centre made possible human encounters and helped to develop the notion of a community. Furthermore, also based on circular figures, we see the first Taffí ceramics, which were made using red earth and stylised forms, mainly for utilitarian purposes.

As for Gabriel Chaile, he started collecting ceramic vessels several years ago, some of which can be seen in the exhibition at Studio Voltaire. For Chaile, the purpose is to understand historically how an object is initially conceived for a specific purpose, but that purpose evolves over the years due to its cultural and historical context. Essentially, the meaning and poetics of objects change through generations and individuals who use them. In that sense, it is a mistake to define objects only by looking at their production context because they have malleable and non-linear histories that change over time, which at times become more relevant to us today. In this way, Chaile also constructed a monumental adobe work in the exhibition room as a spherical figure that blends visual elements from pre-Columbian cultures of Argentina, religious rituals, desires for spirituality in times of crisis, and a notion of contemporary archaeology. The artist invites us to a ritual and to reconnect with the earth. Thus, Chaile defines shapes from their historical and genealogical component, understanding that their readings mutate, and therefore attempting to define their raison d'être becomes a futile act.

In a similar attempt, Chaile has created works in the past that function as communal ovens for cooking food and bringing communities together around fire and food in a circular arrangement. This serves not only as a religious ritual but also as a way to create collective poetics around local ingredients.

Deliberately, Chaile has covered all the walls of the room in Studio Voltaire with adobe, making a reference to the oldest material in the history of architecture. Adobe and clay are not just a thing of the past but also of the present and future simultaneously. The earth is the symbolic factor that connects us with our ancestors and with speculations about future lives. Chaile's work thus proposes an anthropology and archaeology with objects and what they can provoke or induce in customs and human behaviors.

For this exhibition, Chaile invited the artist Laura Ojeda Bär to create a series of paintings, which are displayed around the room against this reddish backdrop of earth. The images depicted in the paintings are objects from human culture that we all recognize or are present in our collective unconsciousness. For instance, we see objects that are now at the British Museum, such as a Moai (heads made by the Rapa Nui culture), the head of Pharaoh Ramses II of Egypt, and also things such as a Modernist sculpture by Alexander Calder, among many other objects from different periods in history. In this sense, the intention is to demonstrate how the meaning of these objects can be greatly influenced by the context in which they are exhibited, particularly when placed alongside other objects. By juxtaposing two objects that every viewer already knows or is extremely familiar with but that come from completely different contexts, new stories, new poetics and new ways of interpreting their meaning, whether historical, utilitarian, cultural, or symbolic, are generated.

In this way, we can see how earth as a building material has not only been present since the beginning of human history in the first sedimentary cultures but also how its interpretations and meanings are active elements that change over time. In the depths of clay, where ancient echoes meet our present times, Gabriel Chaile's work invites us to wonder the enduring mysteries of human culture and the transformative power of objects.

Circles Unearthed: Gabriel Chaile at Studio Voltaire

Gareth Nash's Exhibition at The Royal Cambrian Academy

Serenity and Cultural Fusion: The Ceramic Journey of Nicole Chan