A fervent devotion to stones is present in the room. Entering “Burns until finding a place,” Ivana Salfity’s exhibition, is like entering the studio of an observer of stones. Each of the works presented, whether a photograph, an object, or a sculpture, brings with it at least one stone.

With attention focused on an overall view, the exhibition presents a formal exploration of sculpture, where stones are treated as volumetric bodies, with geometric shapes, coming together in space, seeking balance, alternating variations of color, shape, and texture.

With attention focused on a closer view, each stone, with its marks, suggests wounds and scars, suggesting what cannot be repaired. I think of the notion of Wut Walanti, which Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui and the sculptor Victor Zapata gather from the Aymara worldview, and which allows us to think of “the irreparable, that which breaks, the broken stone.” Cusicanqui also speaks of the term ch’ixi, which designates a type of gray tone, a color that from a distance appears gray but is formed by points of pure and agonizing color: interwoven white and black spots. It is a gray that distinguishes certain entities, in which the power to cross borders and embody opposing poles resonates: Ivana’s stones have the strength of this gray.

Stone skin 

Each of the stones in this exhibition, even those that appear to be stones but are not, exhibit their history from the surface: in the break they bring, the traces they carry, the scars that cross them. In what way do these stones find a place and balance? Located in totemic stacks, in steps, on a shelf, on supports made with refashioned industrial objects, embedded in brick, in hollows in foam or fine iron feet, wrapped in lycra, the stones compose a certain space of worship, of ritual gathering.

Ivana does not show us precious stones, nor virtuoso photographs or sculptures, but rather exalts the action of collecting and gathering with which she composes that space. With a provocative and obsessive character, she depaysages the stones by decontextualizing them from their usual environment and making them part of her work without a specific selection criterion. Camouflaged bodies, altered functionalities, and non-linear orders coincide in repetition, inducing absurdity. When gathered in the room, the stones emanate a force, barely revealed.

The space 

From the back, a set of three volcanic black stones can move and hold at the same time: supported on thin iron legs, their tips evoke antennas. Objects that look like stones and stones embedded in foam, mattresses or tombs that float lightly elevated from the ground. To one side, 6 photographs show the presence and transformation of stones that were moved from one place to another in Ivana’s workshop, that were used to hold doors or got trapped in a net. On the other side, 72 photographs of stones made of paper and glue, aligned along the room, insistently represent the action of releasing a stone. This photographic performance refers to absurdity and difficulty; it is a sort of inversion of the myth of Sisyphus: instead of carrying the stone, the artist releases it over and over, eternally.

“Burns until finding a place” challenges us, inviting us to seek meanings in that playful space composed of its stones: How can stones, through their shapes and textures, narrate stories? Do their marks and scars show their ability to resist and transform over time? What wounds and breaks do they carry? What can they tell us about ourselves?

Without stones or sediments, there is little or no history to tell.