Let us reverse the pessimistic incipit of Lev Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina: all unhappy nations are alike in one way or another, but every happy nation is such in its own way.
Today the main airport is the epitome of a nation. The inscription affixed to a column at Carrasco Airport, Uruguay’s main airport, may be sugary, but reading it gives pleasure. Certainly Uruguay is a distant and happy “island,” so much so that Carrasco’s almost seems like an abstraction, so marked is the leap in spacetime and that of culture and lifestyle.
We will try to take a Marco Polo-like journey to a distant and little-known land. This was accomplished by Marta Trucchi, a young Italian artist (instagram.com/_trucchitruc_/) born in Switzerland in 1995, who studied illustration in Paris at the École de Condé and has successfully exhibited her works in Italy and abroad.
The works of Marta Trucchi
For my first trip overseas I wanted to at least get to know one person from the place where I was going. I actually knew Elina Damiani, a naïve artist who has exhibited in Uruguay and also in Italy (elinadamiani.com). Ten years ago she had come to Genoa where I live because she was a friend of an uncle of mine in whose cellar she had set up an exhibition “on the fly” (the cellar overlooks a central area of the city). Every summer since then she came to Genoa where she set up an exhibition, and each time she invited our family to visit her. I was the first. Elina Damiani lives in a house that is always full of people because it is a permanent venue for exhibitions. It is located in the Barra de Maldonado, near the Punta del Este on the Atlantic Ocean, a very beautiful area, where by the sea people surf and inland people walk through eucalyptus forests.
Then last fall you went back to Uruguay. Those were the days of presidential elections…
There was a strange atmosphere: neither of latent warfare as is typical of too many nations not only Latin American, nor of sleepy silence as in Italy. It felt like a day of celebration, a happy celebration, not a rowdy one….
Yamandu Orsi, the man chosen by former President José Mujica to bring the left back to power in Uruguay, won, over the leader of the ruling party, Álvaro Delgado.But the Uruguayan left is different from the Peronist left that destroyed Argentina’s economy, as well as from the militarized lefts of Venezuela and Cuba, or the Brazilian left, linked to China and Russia. Uruguay follows liberalism, putting the freedom of individuals and families above the state and parties, with unquestionable results economically, similar to the striking results of the United States which, with 4 percent of the global population, produces 25 percent of GDP and 46 percent of the world financial market. But Uruguay has its own specific characteristics, such as a high quality of life and low crime, so much so that it is called the South American Switzerland.
…There is widespread wealth in Uruguay, by Latin American standards. But what matters is not so much the economy as the low bureaucracy. Free people create healthy territories and economies, with good average wealth and levels of poverty certainly lower than those found unfortunately in most of Latin America. What you see in the Punta del Este area, but I think also in Montevideo, is just the quality of life: that one amazed me. For example, houses do not have house numbers: everyone names their own. Everywhere there are free and easy-to-open cultural centers. Politics does not run ahead of everything and above everyone. Parties are also debureaucratized: in Barra de Maldonado there is an area of about sixty houses all surrounded by greenery and a short distance from the sea. When one of the inhabitants wants to organize a party, she doesn’t send quintillions of emails and messages on Whattsapp: she plays a drum for a while, and whoever hears it and wants to participates in the party, bringing something.A young woman doesn’t live in fear and can move through the streets or paths without fear. Women’s Day is not an ideological ritual: it is free and with music. There are free tango lessons all year round, and you dance with whoever is there. Of course then, since the economy is healthy, they don’t just think about having fun, but they work trying to live well and create culture. In this order of priorities they are not like us…Then there is music H24 in every house, but the musical one is the common language of all Latinos.I came back to La Barra, because I wanted to participate in the exhibition that concluded a cycle that began in 2023. The event took place in the Puertas adentro artist residency, one of many spread across the nation, directed by Mariela Soldano (arteinformado.com). I could not help but participate in that project that was closing but to start a new path. In art nothing is ephemeral and evanescent, not even pop and marketing-related graphics – Ars longa, vita brevis.
Also in Punta del Este is another artists’ residency called Pueblo Garzon that houses about 200 people, thanks to the support of 2020 donors (foundations, companies, individuals).
Yes, and near Pueblo Garzòn is the home of Montevideo-born sculptor Pablo Atchugarry’s foundation-museum. His works can be seen in numerous public settings in both Europe (he has a home in Italy) and Latin America. In 2002 he was awarded the “Michelangelo” prize in Carrara, and in 2023 Atchugarry represented Uruguay at the 50th International Art Exhibition-the Venice Biennale.Across the street from the Atchugarry museum is Xippas (xippas.com/galleries/montevideo/), a contemporary art gallery founded in 1990 with locations in Paris, Geneva and Punta del Este. All around Punta del Este is a forest of eucalyptus trees.Then there is Casa Pueblo, an expanse of white stone like a Greek town overlooking the sea, with Gaudi-like curved lines by artist Carlos Páez Vilaró, which includes a hotel and a museum.
…The impression I have of Uruguay? It is a country where artists have the opportunity to express themselves and work and where there is a whole region that is environmentally intact where-without public help-artists can live and build real ideas and structures with words colors sound and bricks.
The article Uruguay, a solid nation rich in art and culture comes from TheNewyorker.
