Humana is a site-specific installation proposal that includes not only the exhibi- tion of a series of artistic pieces but also the integration to a circular program that involves urban recyclers and other artists in the construction of the artwork. By intervening in the circulation of waste materials, recyclables, plastics and textiles, the artists engage in cooperative work with the community where Humana is be- ing installed. After the first edition of this experience at La Usina del Arte (Buenos Aires, Argentina) in 2022, under the tutelage of art critic Fernando Farina and with artist Carlos Herrera as curator, Jessica Trosman and Martín Churba seek to expand this work methodology to other communities, following the same environ- mental premise: to promote an urgent reflection on matter, its durability, its place and future function.



About Trosman and Churba Background and Prospective

Martin and Jessica in one of the Humana workshops.

Between 1997 and 2002, Trosman and Churba formed a duo that, with their brand TROSMANCHURBA, explored the history of avant-garde fashion in Argentina.
The interest in material transformations and their alchemical relationship with different work variables such as pressure and temperature implied a sophisticated link between high and low fashion. The use of the thermo-stamping machine, crucial in those previ- ous works, reappears in the Humana proposal, where this technique is taken up again to rethink the relationship with remains and leftovers in all its complexity. Transcending the individualized human body as a scale and unit of work, Trosman and Churba inves- tigate the aesthetic, social and communal dimension of the garbage dump. In this way, they abandon the parameters and limits of industry to elaborate –against the light- a collective body, repulsive and beautiful at the same time.

Humanas’s history.

In 2018, in the Province of Buenos Aires, Martín Churba was called to partici- pate in the Arte en Barrios (Art in Neighborhoods) Project, which invited to think of culture as a tool for social inclusion, promoting equal access to quality pro- posals. Since then, through technology transfer and methods for arts manage- ment (textile art, textile screen printing and thermal transfer) workshops, Chur- ba has maintained a dynamic link, which continues today, with the participating organizations in marginal neighborhoods. First with his brand Tramando, and afterwards with the Diego Duarte Cooperative, he developed numerous proj- ects in the City of Buenos Aires and in the Conurbano (the suburbs). The Diego Duarte Cooperative operates as a center for the dissemination of trades and job opportunities for the community. Alicia (founder of the Diego Duarte Coop- erative) and Churba have been working for the last four years in processes of recovery and resignification of materials.

For her part, Jessica Trosman began in 2019 to shift towards sculpture in her work. Starting from volumes and textiles that she had made for human bod- ies, she built a spatial language influenced by the logic of distortion and the deviation of industrial materials and methods. Twenty years after the last work they shared, and with the background of these formal investigations, Trosman summoned Churba to expand this search with her. Freed from the imperatives of clothing products, they opened a new universe, free of function and without creative limits. Jessica Trosman and Martín Churba have once again signed a work together. This time, it’s the largest, the most extensive: a long-awaited return that postulates not only changes of scenery and scale, but -above all- of ethical and conceptual scope.



The Humana proposal outlines an integral program in which the exhibition of the installation results from a broader project based on the relationship with the surrounding environment where it is produced, without which the proposal could not be possible.

circular art

program

Thus, the proposal consists of three interrelated and necessary parts:

1 - Arrival in the community. After establishing a link with the local collectors, an investigation is carried out on the processing of waste materials, plastics and textiles, their origin, their intermediate stages and their final destination. Through a series of work guidelines about the role of the collectors, about these stages of treatment of what will be the raw material of the piece, and about the plants where the work is carried out, a relationship with the recyclers starts to grow, and this develops into a collective process of material work

Circle art outline.

2 - Establishment of a collective residency program. In this temporary workshop, the existing procedure is linked to the work tools offered by Trosman and Churba. Training is provided, among others, in the use of the thermo-stamper, a pressure and heat plate used for textile thermo-transfer, a popular and widespread tech- nique in the textile world, fundamental in the duo’s professional and artistic career. Within the territory of the residency, the workshop invites local artists to come into contact with this experience in textile management transferred to recycled materials. In this second part of the process, work begins on the installation piece Humana. The sculptures are made from materials available in the market (wood, iron, steel wire, etc.) together with 3D printed pieces that function as the assembly of tensegrity (a system of hard and soft materials: the hard ones are the axes, the soft ones are connectors). In this way, formal techniques capable of generating a range of sensitive effects are introduced: the hollow, the aerial, the light, the hard, the resistant. A recycled textile net is added to this, product of the work with textile leftovers from dry-cleaning, knitted textiles, crochet or two-needle weaving. This net works as a support, skin or musculature, building a sort of aerial nest on which the plastic elements of the garbage are sustained, compressed with heat and pressure, and elaborated by diverse chromatic palettes.

3 - Activation of the piece. Once the piece is installed, it will not only be contem- plated by visitors, but it will also become a trigger for a series of public programs for the community. Among these, one of the most crucial of them is the invitation for schools to participate in an educational program that focuses on the practice of recycling by making art pieces from discarded materials of what once were ob- jects of use. Through a series of activities in the form of open workshops, guided tours led by the producers of the pieces, open assembly sessions, Humana can serve as a purpose for formal, architectural and technical explorations about its structure and composition; to reflect and learn about the possible uses and alter- native destinations of waste nowadays; to integrate the participants in the circuit of composition of a superhuman body whose parts will finally be put into a vast and infinite circulation.