Curated by Agustín Pérez Rubio

With her illegible, spidery scribbles, Argentinean-born Mirtha Dermisache (1940–2012) explored the frontiers of writing—the zone where writing and drawing became one. The springboard for these decades-long investigations was her groundbreaking 1966–67 work Libro n˚1 (Book No. 1), a five-hundred-page volume with not a single recognizable word. But for all her sophistication and audacity, few Argentineans know Dermisache’s work. Now MALBA’s comprehensive survey—the artist’s first retrospective—promises to reshape the reception of her art both in her native country and worldwide. Organized by Pérez Rubio and accompanied by a multi-authored catalogue, the show—which includes letters, Dermisache’s personal archives, never-before-seen “legible” texts, and material pertaining to her work as an educator—will attempt to make sense of her seemingly empty calligraphies, writing that either means too much or nothing at all. 

— María Gainza