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Las Tres Gracias is a site-specific, operatic installation by Jimena Sarno that reexamines western civilization’s myth of democracy and the architecture and role of the theater as both a political and pedagogical experiment. Drawing inspiration from ancient cosmologies and Third World vision, the work explores the cyclical nature of destruction and renewal within the context of ongoing imperialism and the normalization of contemporary forms of fascism.

The project takes its name from a missing neoclassical sculpture, Las Tres Gracias—which once stood in the botanical gardens of Buenos Aires—and the subsequent search for it. This sculpture depicts the three daughters of the Greek god Zeus, believed to bestow beauty, mirth and grace upon humanity. Utilizing the structure of Greek tragedy as a point of departure, Las Tres Gracias incorporates sound, video, sculpture, light, and text, to create a multi-sensory landscape that reflects on the absurdity, beauty, and brutality of existence. 

Las Tres Gracias was made collaboratively and across borders. The installation features a two-channel video, shot by Sarno in Super 8 film with a hand-held camera, capturing scenes from various botanical gardens–imperial tools used to control and exploit nature in the expansion of colonial enterprises. Central to the piece is a libretto in which Sarno interweaves fragments of texts written by South American revolutionaries and journalists, all of whom were poets. North American composer and vocal artist Molly Pease composed and directed the music for the text, interpreted by a chorus of three operatic voices that reverberates through felted speakers. Pease's voice whispers the libretto in English on a fourth speaker. Percussion improvisations composed and performed by Italian percussionist Valentina Magaletti animate the actors' lines, emanating from an array of suspended speakers. The choir contextualizes the percussion sections with stories that weave South American creation myths, colonial plunder and extractivism, militarization, ecocide, genocide, liberal complacency, unrealizable utopias, and the collective responsibility of living in just relation with all beings. 

Recorded on Indigenous People’s Day, Las Tres Gracias carries grief and rage in a world where colonial violence has surpassed our worst nightmares. Las Tres Gracias evokes both a world that is, and a world that could be, insisting on awareness and resistance to dominant power structures. 

About the artist

Jimena Sarno is an interdisciplinary artist and educator born in Buenos Aires, Argentina and living in Los Angeles. With a focus on the sensorial and affective experiences shaped by political subjecthood, she works across a range of media including installation, sound, moving image, text and sculpture.

Sarno's work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at MASS MoCA, REDCAT, Vincent Price Art Museum, Clockshop LA, 18th Street Arts Center, LACE, Visitor Welcome Center, The Museum of Latin American Art, The Mistake Room, Human Resources, PØST, UCI Contemporary Art Center, Grand Central Art Center, Control Room, San Diego Art Institute, The Luminary, and Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea de Santiago De Compostela, among others. She is a recipient of the 2021 California Arts Council Individual Fellowship, the 2015 California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists, the 2017 Foundation for Contemporary Art Emergency Grant, and the 2019 Rema Hort Mann ACE Grant, and is a 2019-2024 Lucas Artist Fellow in Visual Arts at Montalvo Art Center.

Jimena Sarno is an Assistant Professor of Art at the California State University Dominguez Hills Art Department.

Reception

Saturday, November 9, 2024, 2:00 - 4:00 pm
Nichols Gallery

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