The wastelands in the light of the telescope: allegories of Mariana Sissia

Abstract

This paper discusses the meanings of urban wastelands in the series of drawings fromSistema de defensa de mí misma, of the Argentinian artist Mariana Sissia. In order to search for interpretation possibilities of this motif, we will recur, dialogically, to Jorge Luis Borges and Rodolfo Walsh. We aim to establish intertextuality, furthermore, with depictions of urban voids in Una Calle de Barracas (1939), by Horacio March, and Una periferia (1921-2), by Mario Sironi. We shall conclude that abandoned building sites and city ruins are allegories of suicidal drive and sensations of threat, in Sissia's work. Our concept of suicidal behavior has roots in the contradictory relationship between subject and urban space, according to Walter Benjamin. In addition, the topographical plans and telescopic maps from Sissia's En otro mundo la belleza es extraña (2011-12) will be mentioned also in an allegorical perspective, as metaphors of Aura and resistance to neoliberal and post-industrial dystopias.