Carlota Beltrame is a great artist from Tucuman and a professor of art at the Universidad Nacional de Tucumán. She spent her childhood with her family in the small town of Tartagal, Salta, where she interacted with cultures as diverse as the Wichi, the Chané and the Aymara, as well as the Syrian Lebanese community and the evangelical groups from the border area of northern Argentina. Beltrame refers to it as a time when she “delved into other intuitions of the world”. Living in the city of San Miguel de Tucumán since 1972, at the start of a decade of upheaval, would spur her interest in politics.
Her work seeks a synthesis that avoids being so-called “pamphlet art” and instead establishes dialogues with other cultural practices such as handicrafts, and where traditions, diverse identities, or the survival strategies of those living in hostile circumstances converge. The pieces by the artist in the Museo Moderno collection are linked to the domestic work carried out by women in the home – tasks that are rarely recognised as being part of the formal economy – and to the critique of the colonial plundering of metals such as gold, silver, copper and tin from the Latin American territory.