Emerging art: a vital halo runs through Tucumán

The effervescence of the Tucumán art scene is one of the characteristics that many of its stakeholders highlight: its prolific range of artists, managers, and curators, its reach. Consultorio, Rusia Galería, Fundación para el Arte Contemporáneo Tucumán, Dicha, Fulana Galería, and Serna Galería are just a few of the visual arts spaces that make up the cartography of this scene. Artists' studios, independently run galleries, training centers—spaces, simply put, open as sites for experimentation —have emerged in recent years and are what sustain the ties that give turgor to the broader visual arts ecosystem .

We build bridges and desire to understand how past, present, and future are articulated along the lines that unite three times, or a single long time, a condition of our existence as human beings . A reflective diagnosis, a constant exercise in thinking about time, the times, of art, of the arts, in Tucumán and its conditions, is at the foundation of many of these spaces.

Also, a profound reflection on the relationship between official art institutions in Tucumán—whose Provincial Museum of Fine Arts , for example, has been closed for five years due to building problems—and the need for independently managed spaces, for meeting places, for exhibitions, for desires and connections, for expanding the horizons of expectations , for spaces for future experiences that both replicate and distance themselves from what has already happened.

Between late 2023 and early 2024, artist and manager Gustavo Nieto opened the eponymous Rusia/Galería, an expression of the paradox of the principle of identity, the Rusia/Galería born in 2009, whose last location had been at Rondeau 297, in downtown Tucumán.

Nieto, along with other artists and scene managers, had maintained that space until 2015, when the Rondeau location closed. “I knew it would reopen because the project had occupied a very important place in society, a kind of independent institution that had to continue to exist,” Gustavo Nieto explains in an interview with Ñ .

The independent gallery as a process of research , of analyzing the scene, of spaces with unexpected uses—the transvestite gallery, as Nieto says. It's also the possibility of integrating the past of a scene with the imaginations of the present and future, of what art can be and will be. Present-day Russia traces these lines.

“Yes, I've been living in the projects where I work , since 2009 in Russia,” Nieto responds to her interviewer's question. “I manage and search for the space thinking about what my home will be. I try to erase binary questions like this or that. I try to think of hybrid options, third possibilities.” Her life is integrated into that idea, as a choice about how to live, about what home will be, about decisions about how to connect.

"It's like a kind of software that's been updated in Tucumán for more than 20 years," says Nieto. This is because there were previous projects, like La Baulera in 2002. "And it happens very unconsciously because it's not inherited, but rather it happens again, so a group of artists get together and start thinking about an independent project," he adds.

Along these lines, with a new generation, then under 30, Consultorio was born at the end of 2022, conceived by the group of artists and managers formed by Javier Rodríguez , Diego Gelatti and Rocío Rivadeneyra .

In an eagerness fueled by having studied at the Faculty of Arts in Tucumán during the pandemic, with no meeting spaces or physical movement, they held six exhibitions in six months. “Many spaces were anecdotal; at the end of the day, we had nowhere to go to see them,” says Rivadeneyra. “We thought a lot about where to go, where we could meet our peers, that's how we came up with Consultorio,” he adds. “We were born with this idea of ​​inviting someone we knew, so they could invite someone we didn't know,” explains Rodríguez.

Diagnosing what emerging artists are doing, what their needs are, how to generate a solid community of exchanges, and a local concern for thinking about the Tucumán scene and its links with other provinces and with Buenos Aires are a constant activity in this proposal.

“We wanted to think of ourselves as a reference space, as a place to come and imagine, to think, to propose, to provoke, as a place to come and see the work of other people, of different generations of artists from the province,” the clinics agree. “Our way of responding to institutional fragility is also to work with an annual agenda,” they explain. The clinic is an open space, available to whatever time requires, as a way of thinking and operating in the context of art.

"This year, for example, we want to work more as a training space, for discussion and debate," they explain. "And we fantasize about organizing our own salon."

In March 2024, the Office organized the Grand Lottery for Tucuman Art , in which artists from the Tucuman scene and friends, such as Alejandra Mizrahi , Agustín González Goytía , Geli González, Carlota Beltrame , Inés Beninca, Anibal Buede, Gaspar Núñez, Elián Chali , among others, donated works as prizes for the Grand Lottery.

In the midst of the pandemic, in Tafí Viejo—a city 10 km from the center of San Miguel de Tucumán—artist Pamela González founded Fulana Galería . Upon returning to her hometown with her son Timoteo, she created a gallery-house. “I decided to close the cycle and leave behind the names and forms of previous projects to start from scratch with a contemporary art gallery,” she tells Ñ .

González agrees with the panorama: Tucumán has a rich artistic and cultural history . “But at the same time, it faces structural challenges, such as the lack of sustainable exhibition and marketing spaces,” he says. “Gallery ownership isn't just about selling art, but also about generating spaces for dialogue, professionalization, and circulation of artwork. It's important to question traditional gallery ownership models and adapt them to the possibilities and needs of our context,” he says. The economic challenge is crucial in the management of any independent project.

On Laprida Street, in downtown Tucumán, a red sign protruding from an old mansion reads "artists." The narrow double door leads to a staircase whose first view is the high stained-glass window. Dicha, an artist's studio and fantasy space, was founded by artist Ana Won and graphic designer María José Vera in 2024 as a space for the production of work for ten artists from the Tucumán scene.

“We looked for artists from different generations, from different stages of their careers, from different disciplines—that's what we were looking for, but we wanted them all to want to become professionals . And I think the entire house is like a large installation of desire,” explains Won. In a context of intrinsic nomadism among Tucumán art workers , with a studio in their home and moving around thanks to scholarships, residencies, etc., the couple opted to create the conditions for a type of space linked to the origins of art, but rare in the Tucumán scene.

Dicha and Russia/Gallery collaborated in 2025 to bring Carlos Huffmann to Tucumán. The artist and curator gave a presentation at Dicha, entitled Imagined Futures , in conversation with Ana Won and Bruno Juliano. At Russia/Gallery, he curated Ignacio Casas' solo exhibition, "Blue, Blue, Error."

The entry "Future" in the Glossary of Philosophy of Technology speaks about time as something new and open, inaugural. A time that can never be closed due to its inherent contingency, because the present is actualized in that potentiality . Speculating about the future of galleries, art spaces, and the scene in Tucumán is, precisely, speculating about space/time relations within hyperspecific coordinates.

However, with each initiative, the scene is updated; the pasts of the galleries that once existed emerge like a vital halo that never fades. In a diagnosis of the present, of the Tucumán art scene, its artists, and its needs, it connects to the past; the first signs of the future bubble up, building in the impossible tension of definitively thinking about future presents. Everyone agrees on the inexhaustible artistic power of the smallest province in the country.