Graciela Carnevale – born in 1942, lives in Rosario, Argentina – has contributed to redefine what art can be. In October 1968, a year marked by intense societal and political revolutions paired with intense artistic radicality, Carnevale locked her unsuspecting audience inside a deliberately empty gallery on the opening night of her solo exhibition as part of the Ciclo de Arte Experimental in Rosario. She immediately left, allowing the situation to unfold on its own. This radical piece, blending political art, activism, and uncompromising action, is now considered one of the defining artworks of the 20th century.
In conversation with Mathieu Copeland, Graciela Carnevale will envisage her 1967 Primary Structures sculptures; her revolutionary 1968 works Acción del Encierro (Confinement Action) and Tucumán Arde (Tucumán Is Burning)—a collective endeavour that denounced the government’s abusive operations in the city of Tucumán; through to her co-organising in 2003 El Levante—an independent collective project aimed at fostering critical thinking through artistic practice, and since 2023 La Huerta, a community garden in Rosario where aesthetics and ethics meet in the way of connecting and building together, a place of mutual learning, a space for training and encounter, for exchanges, conversations, and deeply political work.
Until recently a lecturer at the University of Rosario’s School of Arts and a member of the Red Conceptualismos del Sur, Carnevale has, throughout a life of constant exploration and experimentation, worked to establish collaborative practices that place the community at their core and embrace ecological concerns.
