Cuentos de Cuentas (Online Episodes)

Cuentos de Cuentas is a series of bilingual (English and Spanish) textual and visual essays that function as episodic installments for a book and exhibition by Carla Zaccagnini.

In this project, Carla’s research focuses on the strategies and tactics necessary to keep and transport cash at a time when money was still an object to be kept safe, secret, and under wraps. Using personal memories and appropriated stories, the artist looks into the relationship to cash (primarily American dollars) in Latin American countries, at a time of high inflation, political incertitude, and social insecurity. Between the lines lies this pressing question: What do we lose in economic deals, social relations, and the right to secret movements, when cash is banned from society, and all transactions are made through bank accounts and credit cards?

This series of installments culminates the form of a printed book with bilingual text and ample archival materials (co-published with K Verlag) and an exhibition of the same name in spring and summer 2022.

Image: Carla Zaccagnini. La Carpa (The tent), 2021, watercolors. Photo by Lotten Pålsson

Carla Zaccagnini was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1973. She currently lives between São Paulo, Brazil and Malmö, Sweden and is a visual artist, professor of Conceptual and Contextual Practices at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, and guest curator of the 34th Bienal de São Paulo. Group shows in which she has participated include SPRÅK (Havremagasinet, Länskonsthall, 2020), Shout Fire (Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, 2018), A Universal History of Infamy (LACMA, Los Angeles, 2017), Carla Zaccagnini and Runo Lagomarsino (Konsthall, Malmö, 2015), Un saber realmente útil (Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid, 2014), Under the Same Sun (Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2014). She has participated in the 8th Berlin Biennale (Berlin, 2014), the 9th Shanghai Biennale (Shanghai, 2012) and the 28th Bienal de São Paulo (2008). Her recent solo shows include Mañana iba a ser ayer (MUNTREF, Buenos Aires, 2019), You say you are one, I hear we are many (Obra, Malmö, 2019), Histórias feministas: Carla Zaccagnini (MASP, São Paulo, 2015) and Elements of Beauty (Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven / FirstSite, Colchester, 2015).