Installations, murals, sketches, drawings, originals of altered, surpassed women, dangerous curves, erotic comics and a special room for the girls of Hairy Line, which brings together cartoonists from all over the country, They can be seen from this Wednesday, October 12 at 6:00 p.m. on the Fourth Floor of the Kirchner Cultural Center. Maitena’s mega exhibition, which will have 8 rooms, can be visited until April 2023. About care tasks, our bodies, our sexual-affective relationships, our desires, we chat with the artist in this interview. And on Thursday the 13th, at 7 pm, moderated by Liliana Viola, she will be talking about freedom and humor with Malena Pichot.
What are we going to find?
–You will find eight rooms that cover all my work from the ’80s until now, the work from the beginning, from school manuals to erotic comics in Sex Humoruntil altered womenthe work done in La Nación, which is Overcome, Dangerous Curves, there is a creative process room with sketches and how to put together a page, how to work. And there is also a beautiful room for the project of the Línea Peluda girls, which is a collective that brings together 40,000 cartoonists from all over the country, which was born at the time of the fight for abortion, in the streets. They did a lot of actions and created this group under the slogan that you send a white, black and green drawing, they uploaded it and an incredible account was made with a thousand drawings from all over the country, federal, beautiful and very inclusive. They pasted their drawings on the subway in the operation Spiderthey did a lot of actions and well, I chose to put them who are doing an incredible room with a green wave that takes your breath away, there is a mural of a whole wall that is fabulous, videos of the actions they did in the street, and obviously they will be there too.
And how did you find yourself in front of all your production, after so many years, what is it like to see yourself in that mirror?
–Well, I’ve been reviewing my own work for quite some time and I find that the world has changed a lot, especially in the last ten years, and that I undoubtedly talked about things that no one else talked about. In the creative process room there are things from 30 or 40 years ago, and I worked on gender issues that no one else worked on, that was my topic, the role of women, the female double shift. They were my subjects because it was also my life. I was very young, I had two children and I was overwhelmed because I also wanted to have a professional career, and the double life was really very difficult: I wrote about what was happening to me, and I look at it now and realize that this work is very pioneering. , seen in the distance. And then with altered women, it was a boom commercially, that’s when it spread and reached many countries, many translations, that was crazy. But hey, that material, which is mainly from the ’90s, if I look at it now there are a lot of themes and pages that don’t hold up, that I think are wrong, that they took a big turn, right? , that my wives were exhausted and tired of having to hide their belly, of having to diet, but hey, the turn around is that you don’t have to hide your belly.
It’s good to love each other with the belly…
–Totally, we have to love ourselves with our belly and that they love us with our belly and that’s it, there’s no reason to respond to the heteronorm model and the imposed model of beauty, right?
I also believe that you were also denouncing those situations, those impositions
–Yes, I was denouncing them, but somehow my wives were worried about their diet, their stretch marks, their belly, to hide it. I see it now I see the work of other cartoonists and I realize that the girls have changed, that head has changed. I did what I could, in the time that I had to live, and then, well, I review my work and I find that, which seems to me to be behind the ideas and values that we have today. But there are a lot of things that I was talking about that are not, that are still in the limelight, are still being discussed.
The care work, for example.
–The care works! Exact! My wives always had children, a mother, friends, they were always taking care of someone, a sick friend, a son, school, homework. Around this woman there were always many open combat fronts, and many of them caring tasks and little room for themselves.
For your own wish.
–Of course, in that sense, there are also the comics that I did Erotic, which were before altered women, which is interesting because, seen now, it’s full of hot women everywhere. But in the humor of the magazines and publications of the ’80s and ’90s, women were the object of a chabón’s desire, they were not desiring beings.. And in my comics they are horny, they hang out with women, they masturbate. It was very good for that moment.
And what are you going to talk about with Malena Pichot?
–With Malena we are going to talk about humor, what was done before, what is done now, what we laughed at before, and what we laugh at now, that it has changed a lot, because there is also the issue of political correctness, which for comedians is bravo, because you have to stand very well where you put yourself because, in addition, social networks have changed the game. You used to publish something in a magazine and those who bought that magazine would read it. Now, what you do is on a social network, anyone can read it. On the one hand, that opens an inexhaustible discussion because there is always another point of view. And on the other hand, it opens up haters so that they whore you, so that they mistreat you. It happened to me at the time of the abortion, that one morning I woke up and had a message on Instagram that said I hope you die. And honestly, it’s heavy. If you don’t like what I do, don’t follow me, what do I know. But from there to leaving that message… So, well, we’ll talk about it, how that modified the freedom of humor. I am very interested in listening to Malena, what Malena has to say about this, because she faces the networks like a champion, she always has a lot of height and a high level to answer. I was more of the time when I wanted everyone to like me.
Another mandate of altered women, that they approve us.
–Clear! I wanted to be loved and to be loved. Seek approval. And Malena, in that sense, is a bomb. She doesn’t seek approval and I think that’s great. I, over time, learned that not everyone loves you.
And it’s good too.
–It’s good. What happens is that the networks also opened the world to many more tribes, to many more people, to much more thought. One before he kept what little he knew. I didn’t have followers, I had readers. If they read you and bought your books, it was because they liked you. So, the network thing is very new and opens up the possibility of different types of humor for different people. All that multiplicity of voices is good, it is the best thing that the networks have.
discussion table Laughter and Freedom: Thursday 13, 7 pm, La Cúpula del CCK.
What are we laughing at? What can’t we laugh about now? Cancellation, limits and sense of humor.
Maitena and Malena Pichot participate. Moderated by Liliana Viola.