Wednesday 24 September 2025, 4pm to 5.30pm
School III, St Salvator’s Quad, University of St Andrews
Painter and filmmaker Elda Cerrato is one among several women who collaborated closely with Argentina’s Centre for Art and Communication (CAyC) in the early 1970s – only to be erased from CAyC’s official histories in later years. A biochemistry graduate, Cerrato expressed from an early age an interest in understanding ‘el misterio de los seres vivos’ (the mystery of living being’). When the answers science could provide felt limited, she turned to art and the mystic writings of George Gurdjieff. Biomorphism is heavily present in her paintings, which remain a little-known facet of Argentine abstraction. In this talk I explore the intersection of this visual production with Cerrato’s cinematic experiments supported by CAyC. Looking at the six-minute animation Some Segments (1970), I discuss the politics of rhythm and movement conceived from a non-anthropocentric vision and the relationship Cerrato established between micro- and macro structures. Moreover, by analysing her work in the context of CAyC’s experiments in art and technology, I provide a new reading of the role of vitalism in cybernetic and systems art.
Mara Polgovsky Ezcurra is a Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Art at Birkbeck, University of London, and Director of the Peltz Gallery. Her work focuses on Latin American Art, performance, feminism, and art and technoscience. She is the author of Touched Bodies: The Performative Turn in Latin American Art (2019) and Marcos Kurtycz: Corporeality Unbound (2024). Among her edited publications are The New Public Art: Collectivity and Activism in Mexico Since the 1980s (2023) and Sabotage Art: Politics and Iconoclasm in Contemporary Latin America (2016/2022). Her art criticism has appeared in Afterall, Tate Etc., and Post: Notes on Art in a Global Context.
The walk will be followed by a drinks reception at the School of Art History, 79 North Street, St Andrews.
Image Credit: Elda Cerrato, Still from Some Segments (1970, 6 mins).