Over a year ago, Ines Efrón decided to call actors, visual artists, dancers and directors to think of activities to do while people pass by. She rented a shop on Honduras street, in the neighbourhood of Palermo, and called this visual experiment Vidriera/Display Window. Until Sunday, everyone is invited to come to Honduras 3714 and see one or more of the six performances featuring actor Lalo Rotaveria, photographer Marianela Portillo del Rayo, directors Walter Jakob and Agustín Mendilaharzu, choreographer Ana Gurbanov, visual artist Nicanor Aráoz, and Inés Efrón herself, among others.
Efrón’s scene is called “Cosas que importan” (Things that Matter), in which she hosts a blind food tasting to challenge photographer Flavia Da Rin, both wearing a white dressing gown and caps, as if in an operating theatre. Everything is aseptic: Efrón tongs pieces of different food and offers them to her friend, who has to taste them and guess. Pistachio, chipá, sweet potatoes, peanuts, fainá, sandwich,alfajor de chocolate, etc.
Passersby are surprised. Some keep walking, but many stop to stare, sitting on the sidewalk or anything they find around. A cyclist stops to see what this is about and a driver turns on his car’s hazard lights to watch. In the meantime, walking down the street are women with babies and dogs, grandparents holding hands, doormen, groups of children and runners. The line between public and private, between reality and fiction, between inside and outside becomes blurred, what makes Display Windowa compelling visual project not to be missed. Besides who can resist looking at a display window? “I wanted to use that visual magnetism of shop windows to create a variety of viewing states, to offer a scene on which to set one’s gaze (a state that wouldn’t raise anxiety), a space to show trifles, a living display window that, thanks to the curious gaze of passersby, becomes an almost existentialist act where we can recognize that we all need to show ourselves and be seen,” Efrón says.
You can check Vidriera’s programme here. With free admission!
