The cities of Chicago and Buenos Aires share stories as major ports, railway junctions and meatpacking centres. “If you start looking, there are a lot of similarities in the way they were built,” says Argentine collector and patron Benedicta Badia Nordenstahl. “For me, the important thing is that art has a strong place of resistance in Chicago and Argentina.”
Based in Chicago, where she returned in 2022 after a five-year stint in Singapore, Nordenstahl is campaigning for Argentinians to visit the Midwestern city, whose population is nearly 30% Latino, and experience its arts scene. “It’s not by chance that I chose Chicago,” she says. “It’s a city of actors. A Latin American can feel very comfortable here.
Thanks in part to its networking, Argentina’s presence is felt this year Expo Chicago Art Fair, where three galleries in Buenos Aires are exhibiting for the first time. Barro, Piedras and Isla Flotante are exhibiting as part of the Exhibition section of the fair, which focuses on emerging and younger galleries and is curated this year by Aimé Iglesias Lukin, the Buenos Aires-born director and chief curator of arts visuals at the Americas Society in New York.
“We were very surprised by the in-depth knowledge of Latin American art and its main references within the Chicago art scene, which are certainly part of the incredible work of the MCA”, says Leopol Jose Maria Mones Cazon , director of Isla Flotante. “I hope our first participation is the first of a long series.” At the Expo, the gallery will present works by artists such as Rosario Zorraquín, who creates a work in situ, and Mariela Scafati, whose sculpture was acquired by the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago in 2019.
Extension of networks
It was Cazon’s friend Nordenstahl who introduced Scafati’s art to Naomi Beckwith, then senior curator at MCA Chicago. “I tie the knots. I am a people connector,” says Nordenstahl. “I want to bring as many ambassadors from Argentina who understand the context.”
She convinced several Argentine collectors to attend this year’s fair; worked with the Argentine Consulate General in Chicago to arrange tours for local Argentines; and arranged for Agustín Díez Fischer, the director of the Espigas Foundation archives and research center in Buenos Aires, to speak at the Curatorial Forum co-organized by Expo Chicago and Independent Curators International. The forum’s keynote speaker, director of the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, Victoria Noorthoorn, is also among Nordenstahl’s relatives.
Further connections will be made in Nordenstahl’s own home, an industrial loft in nearby River North, where a rehang of his collection, viewable through guided tours, is in dialogue with Expo’s Exhibition section.
“We develop programs that can help people understand Argentine or Latin American art in a more holistic way,” she says. “Galleries in Argentina don’t usually sell art like hot bread or a luxury item, without thinking. You cannot disengage Argentine art from its change and its resistance. I believe that collecting is a social responsibility and a political exercise.
