Will the stars still be there when we've departed toward them?

A constellation is a point of view; it is imagination, possibility, and fleetingness. In all of that, there is truth. In the visible, there is truth. For 48 hours, the city of Paraná simultaneously hosts the work of Luciana Scutella across three different art spaces. This is not a common occurrence: she is participating in the Salón Provincial de Entre Ríos —where she took first prize—, in a collective exhibition at Aura, and in the closing of the series known as Programa Doméstico. A small constellation, but a constellation nonetheless.

Her work moves along the boundary between tradition and extinction, legacy and disappearance. What remains is a sort of present-tense ruin of every human trace. Is a retro-future challenge 'Entrerriano-style' possible? What is the agenda from now until 2050 for what is produced in the city? The Local government of Paraná recently released a series of videos—with evident use of AI—featuring the city’s iconic characters that shape its sentimental education: The Robot, the Little Duck, and a Yacaré in the style of Japanese Mecha anime. Is this how our memories will be? Luminous, pristine, and sunny, the three local icons walk through empty streets, devoid of people or vehicles, which perhaps fled terrified by their presence.

There is no 'team' in Luciana’s work. The future into which she projects herself is made of the remnants of a solitary time traveler who could only rescue a few fragments in their backpack and waist bag. In the work presented at Aura, a set of toys is arranged in a line, covered in a white dust—a mixture of the passage of time that homogenizes singularity. It makes it diffuse. 'Is death the past or the future?' is the harrowing question the artist asks us. A jar, a stuffed animal, a book, a dried flower. The world in miniature seen from the moon. A collection of fragments that, through contiguity, assemble a whole. The inverted gesture of the 'biennialization' of a work. Just as it arrived at Aura—in the trunk of a car—so it will leave.

As if in a hallucinated Weird Fiction landscape, amidst works constructed with elements from a tradition no less than 500 years old, the artist erects a marionette in the Provincial Museum—I wouldn’t call it giant, but certainly amplified in scale. What would normally occupy the corner of a desk here claims the center of the room. Like a Poké Ball or a magic spell, Luciana activates a giant pencil sharpener in the shape of a little monkey, designed to always remain standing, except when its base is pressed. Here, the action is frozen; the little monkey will not stand again, as there is nothing left to tension it. Now, it rests.

The third appointment of this 'Scutella abduction journey' is the recent closing exhibition of Programa Doméstico called Mostrar la hilacha (Showing the Thread). An exhibition that lasts only two days and marks the sighting window of this constellation. There, Luciana displays a dagger, also of medium scale, made of fabric and filled with cotton, hanging from fishing lines near the back of the room, theatrically lit before a backdrop of embroidered hearts. An 8-bit aesthetic, like a video game cartridge. Reality is replaceable by pixels and Instagram reels. Proximity is abduction. Time is a spark. Observing the stars and reading them is a modest privilege we humans can grant ourselves before our extinction. Will the stars still be there when we've departed toward them?