From March 14th to May 24th 

Artist: Albertina Carri

“Improper Point” (2015) focuses on the letters Ana María Caruso sent to her daughter Albertina Carri and her sisters from captivity, before her disappearance. In an obsessive and excessive philological exercise, Albertina scrutinizes her mother’s handwriting on the paper under a microscope and projects it onto a moon flanked by her mother’s names (which are also the names of the Conception). In the audio, Albertina’s voice reads the letters, sparing us, as they say, “not a single comma.” By reading the punctuation, that voice wants us to understand that, beyond the conventions of writing, there is something magical that allows us to glimpse what has not been written and that takes the form of a directive for the future.

We weep, of course, when we realize our own ignorance regarding the meaning of the mother’s repeated command: “Behave yourself.” That instruction links life (in this case, cut short by a murderous state) with the space of correspondence which, as we know, establishes the public sphere and, therefore, modern politics. Even in the darkness that constitutes the circumstances of their writing, Ana María’s letters do not foster despair. “Behave yourself,” “Read.” Therein lies an association between ethics and the public sphere that we must uphold today as a horizon.

Daniel Link