Liliana Porter
Journey
07/12— 10/13/25
Opening: Friday, July 11 7PM
Gallery 5, Level 2; and Auditorium
Currently based in New York, Liliana Porter returns to Argentina to present a retrospective exhibition of her work, covering her extensive career that began in the 1960s. The exhibition will showcase works ranging from her printmaking pieces and collaborations with The New York Graphic Workshop (1964–1970) to her artistic projects that move between printmaking and painting, geometry and materiality, and literature and storytelling.
Starting in the 1990s, Porter began to depict narratives—first in paintings and later in installations and videos—introducing her now well-known cast of characters made up of figures found in flea markets. Like a cast ensemble, they appear in her works to speak to us about memory, politics, labor, and human relationships, among other themes. In this way, Porter creates situations that speak to life itself, referencing specific contexts but also addressing broader concerns that particularly interest her.
The exhibition seeks to revisit Porter’s relationship with printmaking as an expanded dimension that led her to explore performativity. This potential enriched her view of the theatrical, expressed both in her video works from the 2000s and in her theatrical productions. Therefore, this retrospective also includes stage pieces that will be part of a dedicated program designed for Malba’s auditorium.
This exhibition aims to bring the public closer to both the different stages of the artist’s career and the deep layers of meaning her works present. It seeks to highlight the richness of her work, supported by a critical perspective and a relaxed contemporaneity that employs both humor and empathy.
Curator: Agustín Pérez Rubio.
Liliana Porter
Buenos Aires, 1941.
She works across various media: printmaking, painting, drawing, photography, video, installation, theater, and public art. She studied at the Manuel Belgrano National School of Fine Arts. In 1958 she traveled to Mexico, where she studied printmaking at the Ibero-American University. In 1964 she moved to New York and attended the Pratt Graphic Art Center. Alongside Luis Camnitzer and José Guillermo Castillo, she founded the New York Graphic Workshop and, in 1967, formulated the concept of FANDSO (free assemblage, non-functional, disposable, serial object).
In 1971, she participated in the creation of the Latin American Imaginary Museum, a museum without walls, in contrast to the Center for Inter-American Relations (CIR) and its regressive policies. In 1977 she co-founded and taught printmaking at the Camnitzer-Porter Studio in Lucca, Italy. From 1991 to 2007 she was a professor in the Art Department at the City University of New York, CUNY, Queens College. Among other distinctions, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1980.
She began exhibiting her work in 1959 and has since participated in over 450 exhibitions in 40 countries. Her most recent solo exhibitions include those at El Museo del Barrio in New York, the Pérez Art Museum in Miami, Luciana Brito Gallery in São Paulo, ART OMI in Ghent, New York, the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia, Ruth Benzacar Art Gallery in Buenos Aires, the National Museum of Visual Arts in Montevideo, the Franklin Rawson Provincial Museum of Fine Arts in San Juan, the Museum of Art of Zapopan in Guadalajara, Sicardi Gallery in Houston, TX, Barbara Krakow Gallery in Boston, MA, and Galerie Mor-Charpentier in Paris.
Her work is part of the traveling exhibition Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985 at the Brooklyn Museum in New York and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. In 2017 her work was included in Viva Arte Viva, the 57th Venice Biennale, and she premiered Domar al león y otras dudas, her third theatrical production, at the 2nd Performance Biennial, held at the Parque de la Memoria in Buenos Aires. In 2018 she premiered THEM, a theatrical production co-directed with Ana Tiscornia and music by Sylvia Meyer, at The Kitchen, New York.
Her work is held in numerous public and private collections, including: the Metropolitan Museum, MoMA, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Public Library (New York); Malba, Museo Moderno, and National Museum of Fine Arts (Buenos Aires); Daros Foundation (Switzerland); Tate Modern (London); Patricia P. Cisneros Collection (New York and Caracas); National Library of Paris; Reina Sofía Art Center Museum (Madrid); and Rufino Tamayo Museum (Mexico City).
Images: Liliana Porter. Wrinkle Environment Installation I, 1969–2024 [detail, top]; and Memorabilia, 2016 [left].