Place: Tacuarembó
Treaty of Limits, 2011

Tacuarembó, in Uruguay, is the geographical center of the pampas. In the past few decades, it has also come to be known as the pampas’ capital. For Gauchos, referring to the gaucho culture and people from Uruguay, Argentina and the state of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil), this city is a cultural reference, a crossroads of converging events in the pampas: considered the very capital of this autonomous region, where three distinct countries have combined their cultures to discover their own common cultural identity.

Tacuarembó is a city (as well as region) where many indigenous archaeological sites remain buried – although already mapped, they have not been unearthed due to issues of protection and cultural preservation.

The work in Tacuarembó is based on signs that show the names of cities (the kind often placed on a main road to show the entrance to cities in the Brazilian countryside). The sign consists of large letters made of concrete, set up on the ground, forming the locality’s name. In the work, concrete letters spelling out “TACUAREMBÓ” were partially buried at the entrance of the city so that only one third of the sign can be seen above ground. Besides the installation in the city, the photograph Lugar:Tacuarembó (Place: Tacuarembó) is also a work in itself, somewhere between the photographic record and photography as artwork, autonomous in relation to the installation.

TREATY OF LIMITS  in the exhibition Beyond Frontiers8th Mercosul Biennial, Porto Alegre – Brazil, 2011 (photographs by Fabio del Re):

Text by the curator Aracy Amaral (published in the 8th Mercosul Biennial catalogue, 2011)

Text by Anne-Laure Amilhat Szary (published in Placing the Border in Everyday Life, 2014)