Celina Eceiza’s practice daringly centers drawing in installations that take visitors on journeys of embodied pleasure and narrative wonder. Developed over many months for I don’t know you like that: The Bodywork of Hospitality, Celina Eceiza’s site-sensitive installation immerses visitors in a world where the body is host to a constellation of powers, practices, and beliefs.
Introduced by a slightly oversized soft sculpture of a body in parts leaning in a corner, colorful monumental figures partaking in fluid life-affirming rituals grace a long blue-floored passageway, buoying visitors into a transformative voyage. These large chalk drawings lead to a smaller room where contortionists and muses both neutralize time and open onto a wide space of rebirth where visitors can rest on a few more soft body-parts sculptures as they contemplate a portrait gallery of expanded kinship. Eceiza’s installation also references temporary architectures—improvised shelter, space of childhood imagination and play, and ephemeral site of communal ritual practice—reassigning the positions of host and guest to create a space for an array of possible hospitable/hostile relationships.
Celina Eceiza’s practice daringly centers drawing in installations that take visitors on journeys of embodied pleasure and narrative wonder. Developed over many months for I don’t know you like that: The Bodywork of Hospitality, Celina Eceiza’s site-sensitive installation immerses visitors in a world where the body is host to a constellation of powers, practices, desires, threats, and attractions.
A passageway lures visitors into a labyrinthine space lined with pulsating bleached drawings on red fabric, which opens onto a central area where colorful monumental figures and floor sculptures portray fluid life-affirming rituals and rites of community. Were it possible to see the gallery from above, visitors would realize that they are traveling through a space shaped after the kidney—one of the organs through which the body metabolizes the world, fabricating sustaining energy and discarding what threatens it. Eceiza’s installation also references temporary architectures—improvised shelter, space of childhood imagination and play, and ephemeral site of communal ritual practice—reassigning the positions of host and guest to welcome an array of possible hospitable/hostile relationships.
Celina Eceiza is an artist and writer based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held at Moria Galería, Buenos Aires (2021; 2018); MOVIL, 2019, Big Sur Galería, Buenos Aires, 2015; Mundo Dios, Mar del Plata, Argentina (2015); Agatha Costure, Buenos Aires (2013); and Isla Flotante, Buenos Aires (2011). Her work has also been featured in group exhibitions in Argentina at Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes Emilio Pettoruti, La Plata (2022); Museo de la Historia del Traje, Buenos Aires (2022); MUNTREF Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Sede Hotel de Inmigrantes, Buenos Aires (2019); Jamaica Galería, Rosario (2019); Galería Constitución, Buenos Aires (2019); Alimentación General, Buenos Aires (2018); Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas, Buenos Aires (2015); Centro de Investigaciones Artísticas (CIA), Buenos Aires (2015); Espacio Otero, Buenos Aires (2013); and at Galería Pasaje 17, Buenos Aires (2012) as well as at Casa de la Cultura de la UAEM, Mexico City (2018) and Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts (2022), Omaha, USA. Her first novel El falsificador [The Counterfeiter] was published by Tammy Metzler Publishing in 2018. She received a Konex Awards merit diploma (textile arts) in 2022.
Gregory Volk, “What is Hospitality in an Era of Crisis?” Hyperallergic, February 16, 2023.
Frieze Editors, “Shows to See in the US this March,” Frieze, March 18, 2022.
Travis Diehl, “’The Bodywork of Hospitality' Sees Communal Care as a Civic Obligation,” Frieze, February 28, 2022.
Jonathan Orozco, "I don’t know you like that,” The Reader, February 25, 2022.
Celina Eceiza’s practice daringly centers drawing in installations that take visitors on journeys of embodied pleasure and narrative wonder. Developed over many months for I don’t know you like that: The Bodywork of Hospitality, Celina Eceiza’s site-sensitive installation immerses visitors in a world where the body is host to a constellation of powers, practices, and beliefs.
Introduced by a slightly oversized soft sculpture of a body in parts leaning in a corner, colorful monumental figures partaking in fluid life-affirming rituals grace a long blue-floored passageway, buoying visitors into a transformative voyage. These large chalk drawings lead to a smaller room where contortionists and muses both neutralize time and open onto a wide space of rebirth where visitors can rest on a few more soft body-parts sculptures as they contemplate a portrait gallery of expanded kinship. Eceiza’s installation also references temporary architectures—improvised shelter, space of childhood imagination and play, and ephemeral site of communal ritual practice—reassigning the positions of host and guest to create a space for an array of possible hospitable/hostile relationships.
Celina Eceiza’s practice daringly centers drawing in installations that take visitors on journeys of embodied pleasure and narrative wonder. Developed over many months for I don’t know you like that: The Bodywork of Hospitality, Celina Eceiza’s site-sensitive installation immerses visitors in a world where the body is host to a constellation of powers, practices, desires, threats, and attractions.
A passageway lures visitors into a labyrinthine space lined with pulsating bleached drawings on red fabric, which opens onto a central area where colorful monumental figures and floor sculptures portray fluid life-affirming rituals and rites of community. Were it possible to see the gallery from above, visitors would realize that they are traveling through a space shaped after the kidney—one of the organs through which the body metabolizes the world, fabricating sustaining energy and discarding what threatens it. Eceiza’s installation also references temporary architectures—improvised shelter, space of childhood imagination and play, and ephemeral site of communal ritual practice—reassigning the positions of host and guest to welcome an array of possible hospitable/hostile relationships.
Celina Eceiza is an artist and writer based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held at Moria Galería, Buenos Aires (2021; 2018); MOVIL, 2019, Big Sur Galería, Buenos Aires, 2015; Mundo Dios, Mar del Plata, Argentina (2015); Agatha Costure, Buenos Aires (2013); and Isla Flotante, Buenos Aires (2011). Her work has also been featured in group exhibitions in Argentina at Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes Emilio Pettoruti, La Plata (2022); Museo de la Historia del Traje, Buenos Aires (2022); MUNTREF Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Sede Hotel de Inmigrantes, Buenos Aires (2019); Jamaica Galería, Rosario (2019); Galería Constitución, Buenos Aires (2019); Alimentación General, Buenos Aires (2018); Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas, Buenos Aires (2015); Centro de Investigaciones Artísticas (CIA), Buenos Aires (2015); Espacio Otero, Buenos Aires (2013); and at Galería Pasaje 17, Buenos Aires (2012) as well as at Casa de la Cultura de la UAEM, Mexico City (2018) and Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts (2022), Omaha, USA. Her first novel El falsificador [The Counterfeiter] was published by Tammy Metzler Publishing in 2018. She received a Konex Awards merit diploma (textile arts) in 2022.
Gregory Volk, “What is Hospitality in an Era of Crisis?” Hyperallergic, February 16, 2023.
Frieze Editors, “Shows to See in the US this March,” Frieze, March 18, 2022.
Travis Diehl, “’The Bodywork of Hospitality' Sees Communal Care as a Civic Obligation,” Frieze, February 28, 2022.
Jonathan Orozco, "I don’t know you like that,” The Reader, February 25, 2022.