Alejandro Erbetta — Photographic Epic
Solo Exhibition at the Dordogne Departmental Archives
As part of the Bicentennial of Photography
At the intersection of photography, theoretical research, and documentary inquiry, Argentine artist Alejandro Erbetta presents the first two chapters of a photographic epic he has been developing for several years across Europe and Latin America. A resident of France since 2008, he presents here a meticulous body of work spanning France, Argentina, and Chile.
Erbetta’s work is conceived as a long-term artistic investigation, divided into several parts: An Imaginary Kingdom (Chapter 1) and The Land of Oblivion (Chapter 2). These complementary parts received support for contemporary documentary photography from the National Center for the Visual Arts (CNAP) in 2021 and 2023, respectively. In 2024, the project also received support from the Institut Français through its IF EXPORT program for solo exhibitions abroad.
Chapter 1: An Imaginary Kingdom
The first part, An Imaginary Kingdom, focuses on the story of a figure overlooked by official history: Antoine de Tounens, a Frenchman who proclaimed himself King of Araucania and Patagonia in the late 19th century. In this initial phase, the artist undertook investigative journeys—combining photography and writing—in France and Argentina, in order to traverse these distant territories
By combining archival images found on site, autobiographical texts written by Antoine de Tounens, and his own photographs taken during his wanderings, Alejandro Erbetta creates a unique narrative space. In doing so, he blends diverse realities—between current and historical images, between past and present, and between creation and recreation.
Chapter 2: The Land of Oblivion
In the second part, *The Land of Oblivion*, the artist focuses on the tragic events that took place in the Southern Cone at the end of the 19th century, in order to offer a retrospective and revisionist perspective on Argentine history from our present-day vantage point. While, on a global scale, the late 19th century was conducive to policies of colonial expansion, in South America—and particularly in Argentina—this manifested itself in the expansion of nation-state borders. Under the guise of an ideology pitting “civilization” against “barbarism”—embodied by Indigenous peoples—a brutal policy of colonization took hold: the infamous “Conquest of the Desert.”
This campaign, conceived and led by General Julio Roca in 1879, resulted in the massive and nearly complete extermination of Argentina’s indigenous peoples. Consequently, the memory of these communities was destroyed and displaced; yet, in a certain sense, it has survived through generations of survivors, oral histories, testimonies, and historical documentation.
Photography played a pivotal role in this tragedy. There is a significant collection of images and documents in public archives, preserved in institutions such as the Archivo General de la Nación in Buenos Aires, or within the anthropological collections of the Museum of La Plata, compiled in the very context of the state-orchestrated genocide.
A Repressed Memory in the Present
For the artist, the history of the Kingdom of Araucania serves as a starting point for articulating a repressed past in the present, in order to reflect on the current condition of the peoples of the Southern Cone. What remains of these ancestral cultures? How are they integrated into contemporary Argentine and Chilean societies? Some anthropologists, such as Diana Lenton, denounce the existence of a “new conquest of the desert” and show that, today, multinational companies are setting up operations in territories occupied by indigenous peoples to extract oil, lithium, or natural gas, once again forcing these populations to leave their homes.
Following in the footsteps of Antoine de Tounens, the artist undertook new journeys through Argentina in *Le pays de l’oubli* to observe these isolated territories of Patagonia and connect with what remains today of the indigenous populations. In this more anthropological chapter, Erbetta recorded interviews with members of the communities he encountered, giving voice to the descendants of these ancestral peoples. Drawing on fieldwork and by forging close ties with the Mapuche-Tehuelche communities of Río Negro, he has compiled a body of narratives and images centered on the traumatic events inherited from the “Conquest of the Desert.”
This project is part of the artist’s ongoing research, which she has been conducting for several years, focusing on memory and the reconstruction of historical narratives. One of her main motivations was to immerse herself in one of her cultures of origin through her own artistic creation, her encounters, and her investigations, in order to understand the contradictions within national narratives. Indeed, while Argentine (and Chilean) identity was built, on the one hand, on European immigration in the late 19th century, it was forged, on the other hand, at the cost of the destruction of indigenous populations and their cultures. It is precisely this fundamental contradiction of national identity that the artist explores: a part of history that has been repressed and denied to this day.
For this solo exhibition at the BIENALSUR Argentine, presented as part of the Bicentennial of Photography, the artist has created an installation that combines photographs, archival materials, videos, sound recordings, and historical documents, weaving these diverse sources into a powerful dialogue of memory.
