From PAN boxes to the zeros on a banknote: the exhibition that proposes a visual archaeology of Argentina's past

The exhibition "De origen nacional" (National Origin), presented by Banco Macro and curated by Patricia Rizzo, is a visual journey featuring works by Emiliano Miliyo and Aimé Pastorino that reflect on the identity, memory, and cultural symbols of our country . On the ground floor of the Torre Macro lobby, fiction merges with the memory of objects that marked generations.

In advertising, a brand is a name, term, sign, symbol, or design—or even a combination of these—that seeks to distinguish the goods and services of a group of producers from their competitors. Focusing on the symbolic dimension of objects , the aesthetic value of domestically produced containers and packaging is recreated in a way that makes the fictional aspect clear.

Without abandoning the emotional connection to certain brands that inhabit the collective memory , each artist creates works with personal and historical records. Both construct scenes as frozen, nostalgic references and amplified images that challenge the viewer from a collective and intimate perspective.

The curatorship provides a better approximation to the bias when it states: " The exhibition is articulated around the notion of “national” as an expanded field of signs, affects and stories . And it adds: it draws a line between consumer objects, popular graphics, banknotes, brands, industrial aesthetics and tools, to propose a contemporary reading of the local as an affective and political archive."

There's an emotional connection that can strengthen the bond between brand and consumer. Positive emotions like happiness, trust, and admiration are fostered in complex partnerships with some brands that represent health, connection, and celebration.

The curatorial text explains it very clearly: "Through different materials and languages – paintings, sculptures, installations – they address themes such as consumption, memory, graphic design, historical narratives and the aesthetics of the everyday. The pieces that make up the exhibition evoke uses and symbols linked to money, modes of production and forms of consumption , proposing a visual archaeology of our recent past. The result is a sensitive and precise inventory of signs that traverse diverse generations and social contexts, reinterpreted through contemporary art."

The complex monetary past and the exchange of pesos and coins are transformed into soft sculptures that seem to float in the air or expand, breaking the scale and valuing them as framed works. These indications appear in the pieces of Emiliano Miliyo (1970), an artist who has been developing a career around brands , certain emotional connections present in viewers' memories with quality, connection, value, and satisfaction.

Popular iconographies such as banknotes, grocery lists, bread boxes, bags of cement, and toys , working from the intersection of languages and scales. Miliyo says: 'I work with elements we all know. Not to idealize them, but to understand why they endure, what they tell us about ourselves, and how we look at them today. Works in which the boundaries between painting, sculpture, object, and installation blur.'

Only those who lived through the era of Raúl Alfonsín, who began his administration in 1983 with the slogan "with democracy we eat, we heal, and we educate," but whose economic policy defaulted in 1988. Before the onset of hyperinflation in May 1989, the PAN (National Food Plan) boxes that mitigated the disasters of that economy were already in circulation. They were distributed to groups at risk of foodborne illness and contained a basic supply of dry goods. His works have been seen at MALBA, the Museo Moderno, the CCK, the Museo Fortabat, and international venues such as Pinta NY , among others. He was director of the LEA Program at the Faena Arts Center.

In the gallery, two works combine perfectly with a nod to art history . The PAN Boxes mimic Andy Warhol's Brillo boxes, although our artist's boxes alleviated hunger and Andy's celebrated consumption. Behind them, on the flat support, the Poxipol brand, in a landscape frame, has cutouts that mimic Fontana's spatialism. For the artist, incorporating elements from other artists' works is far from seeking to make a quotation or homage. "What I take is that which can be perceived as a product , a trademark of art history that serves as a trigger for reflection on contemporary society."

Some watercolors and sculptures on cotton paper with inkjet prints, such as the pieces “1,000,000”, “Argentine Peso”, “1000 pesos (Sculpture)” or “Loma Negra” that stretch the notions of value, representation and symbolic circulation.

Aimé's works analyze specific sociopolitical contexts through the realistic reproduction of everyday objects in carved, assembled, and painted wood . They range from recognizable machinery, such as a sewing machine made of assembled wood, turned to reproduce the essential machinery necessary for its operation, to meticulous replicas of paint cans, glue cans, or old toy or matchboxes.

She creates a national archaeology of different eras , working from the intersection of languages and respecting scales, in works such as “Piano piano si va lontano” (2019), an installation with replicas of the machines and objects from the artist's grandfather's carpentry workshop, measured to the same scale as the originals, which vary. “WD-40 Box,” “MIT,” or “The Stoic Duration” compose a material landscape that acts as a translator between the aesthetics of the everyday through gestures of contemplation, technical precision, and playful criticism.

“ Every reproduced object contains a story . What's important is not just what it represents, but how it was preserved, recorded, and transformed,” says Aimé Pastorino.

Crafted from carved and polychrome wood, her works have been exhibited at Malba, Muntref, the Castagnino-Macro Museum, and the Kunstverein Leipzig. They engage with forms of industrial design and domestic memory, revealing and recalling the construction of experiences and collective memory.

The artist stated in a recent report: "The following workshops coexisted in my house: my father's goldsmith's workshop, my grandfather's carpentry workshop, which was complemented by my grandmother's painting workshop to make the most colorful nesting toys, and my mother's artist's studio. Before studying Fine Arts, I had already mastered carpentry, welding, painting, drawing, and other techniques. Given this context, it is not surprising that my work is consistently interested in craftsmanship, nor in choosing the object as a means of representation."

When companies present their brand positively through advertising, promotions, and positive experiences, consumers trust it and feel satisfied when purchasing from it. According to consumers, the most typical characteristics of a relationship with a brand are quality, connection, value, and satisfaction.

He adds: " The social and political tensions of an era can be read in objects, as well as its values and desires. That's why in my installations the place of the subjects appears as a counter-form, as a void that can be filled by the viewer and their sensitivity. I hope that in the vestiges of the past we find the clue that helps us rethink the present."

Personal and historical records, both artists construct frozen scenes, nostalgic references, and amplified images that challenge the viewer from the collective and the intimate.

Of national origin , by Emiliano Miliyo and Aimé Pastorino in Torre Macro (Av. Eduardo Madero 1172) from Monday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. with free admission.