Leticia Obeid: Jano

3 November – 20 December 2020

Life can feel like the accumulation of words in a book as we record thoughts and experiences. What if we could reverse, pause or accelerate these in the same way that a book’s pages can be flipped back and forth?

“Janus was a two-faced god in Roman mythology: one face looking to the past and the other to the future. Janus was the god of doorways, beginnings and endings. In this series, the books’ pages behave like Janus, going from past to future of a text or vice versa. Jano is the attempt to revise the minimum portion of time that can be frozen in movement, through image.” (Leticia Obeid)

Leticia Obeid was born in Córdoba, Argentina, en 1975. She lives and works in Buenos Aires. She studied painting at the School of Arts of Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (UNC). Residencies include: the Atlantic Center for the Arts, USA; Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, France, and Casa Vecina, Mexico City.  Recent exhibitions and projections include: Reverberations: art and sound in the MUAC collection, Mexico City; Focus Argentina, ARCO, Madrid (2017); Poéticas Políticas, Parque de la Memoria, Buenos Aires; International Short Film Festival, Oberhausen, Germany; Sights and sounds: highlights, Jewish Museum, New York (2016); Lo contrario de la magia, MALBA, Buenos Aires (2014); The Right to the City, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2013); The Life of Others. Repetition and Survival, Akbank Art Center, Istanbul (2013); Entre siempre y jamás, Latin American Pavilion, 54th Biennale di Venezia (2011); Conversas, 6th Bienal del Mercosur, Portoalegre (2007). She has published the novels Frente, perfil y llanura (Ed. Caballo Negro, Córdoba, 2013) and Preparación para el amor (Ed. Caballo Negro, Córdoba, 2015) and the monographic book Leticia Obeid. To write, to read, to listen, Blatt&Rios, 2015 (bilingual edition).

Fundacion PRÓA opened in 1996 in an historic building in the La Boca district of Buenos Aires and organises multi-disciplinary exhibitions of Argentine and international artists. In 2008 the Foundation launched its renovated building with a major exhibition of Joseph Beuys.

The Artists Film International 2020 programme responds to the theme of language. Local sounds, rituals and political realities feature, from the rhythms and images of a Bahamian Junkanoo to the contested ancestral lands on the desert border between Mexico and the USA.