Very young, Nora Patrich finds motivation in the principles of the important Argentine artistic movement “Espartaco”, working in Ricardo Carpani’s workshop and making several murals with the master Juan M. Sánchez. In addition, she studied painting in the atelier of the Argentine cartoonist Martinez Howard.
From 1977 he had to go into exile. He lived in Israel, Spain, Cuba and Mexico, where he studied at the School of Art and Drawing. Later she lived in Canada for 30 years and developed her artistic career with multiple recognitions, awards and distinctions. His paintings are in the Vancouver Art Gallery (Canada), Casa de las Américas (Cuba) and the National Palace Museum in Guatemala, among other places. His work and his militancy are intertwined in such a way that a third position is configured, which is precisely the combination and ambivalence of both inseparable universes. Nora Patrich believes that there is no political art but that all work is political and fortunately we can count on her experiences related to her in the first person.
This year Nora turns 70 and through her own publishing label jironesdemivida will publish an autobiography that reveals and highlights the desires, frustrations, persecutions, dreams and sacrifices of a woman who portrays an entire generation crossed during her youth more thriving, due to the last civic-military dictatorship in Argentina. In this note you can read an exclusive advance of the first chapter of the book that she will publish through the publishing house that she directs.
Jironesdemivida: the publisher
“The Editorial Jironesdemivida was born with the first book, Women are ours, as another way to express the commitment to the militancy of our people, document their struggles and create a means for these experiences to manifest.
It aims to cover the different periods of the history of our country and Latin America.
The members of the publishing house are militants who were trained in the struggle to change reality and through it we are nourished by the experiences of our people and now we want to transmit it to the new generations that join this transformative task that is endless”.
This is how this book publisher presents itself, developing an “old school” style of curatorship: books with space, volume, illustrations, historical documents and materiality of extreme quality. Jironesdemivida is non-profit. Here you can find his publishing catalogue, although to acquire his latest book you still have to wait.
Nora Patrich, the documentary
Mario Felipe de La Maza describes his audiovisual search: “The project is based on the idea of a documentary feature film that addresses the life of Nora Patrich specifically from her political, family and artistic experiences during the Argentine dictatorship and exile in various countries of the world. world, establishing the idea of a character who, as a result of all his losses, including that of the love of his life who will permanently haunt his social life, rediscovers the way of fighting for the things he believes in, exchanging rifles for brushes”.
The Chilean director also adds about the film that could be released at the end of this year: “It is the inspiring story of a person who, with less than 20 years, risked his life for what he believed. He lost and didn’t quit the game, only to find a different way to play again. She traveled the world crying out for justice, and although many times she was not heard, she ended up giving her loudest cries in front of the government palace of the country that persecuted her, through her art. But for her, the fight is not over and probably never will be.
patrick returns
Nora was changing tactics to support her strategy. Coherence is a common thread that intertwines her life with her work. Going through her history invites us to wonder about what art was persecuted or continues to bother us, but it also makes it possible to make visible the militancy of several generations that fought for their ideals from all possible fronts. From Nora’s art you can think about the history and culture of our people.
“International plastic artist, guerrilla member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Argentina, children’s hairdresser in a Cuban nursery, costume designer in Spain, social activist for women in El Salvador. Nora Patrich’s many lives have been marked by common elements; change and uprooting, struggle and persecution. This is the story of a woman who changed her weapons, but she never gave up her fight. From her childhood full of questions to her battles and her life in hiding, from her love for art to her love for the most forgotten”. This is how Mario Felipe de La Maza cuts Nora as if to make clear the approach that her film work will have.
With different devices or in different formats: Patrich is back. It returns because our society is moving towards a place where it is increasingly necessary to exercise memory about the struggle and the horizon of transforming reality: taking the words, putting up the posters, taking up the books, denouncing the injustices, avoiding the persecutions, organizing collectively and overcoming time.
It is time for such a particular and universal story to be present, whether in the form of a book or a film. That we can also tell our story with the voice of its protagonists.
