PROYECTO SECUNDARIO LILIANA MARESCA

After the violent uprisings in Argentina in 2001, a group of artists (who later assumed the name Liliana Maresca Secondary School Project) initiated various social and artistic endeavours in La Cava de Villa Fiorito, a shantytown in Lomas de Zamora. Since 2007 they have focused their efforts on developing an educational programme with a visual arts focus for the public secondary school no. 349 in the neighbourhood. The Ministry of Education approved the programme in 2009.

The project is an independent collective engaged with the socio-economically deprived Fiorito community. The collective works to empower community members through an educational proposal of contemporary art strategies derived from the neighbourhood’s identity and particular—and very immediate— problems such as discrimination, domestic violence, child labour and the absence of public services. Firmly grounded in the grassroots and employing local cultural elements and participatory methods, they prioritize being inclusive. The collective’s current members—Lorena Bossi, Florencia Cabeza, Ariel Cusnir, and Leandro Tartaglia—operate not merely as pedagogical advisors to the school’s authorities, but also as practitioners and educators, integrating visual-arts methodologies into the general curriculum. These methodologies seek to develop the students’ perceptions both as spectators and producers of visual culture, and foster critical thinking and creative solutions for difficult everyday situations. The artists generate relationships with artistic institutions and alternative art spaces; organizes visits to museums, art centres, and art fairs for children who have almost never left the neighbourhood; invites artists and art professionals to lecture at the school. The collective also organizes art exhibitions featuring renowned artists in hallways and class­rooms, using their work as pedagogical material for academic subjects: Leon Ferrari’s Heliografías series for teaching mathematics and geometry; Guillermo Faivovich & Nicolás Goldberg’s Camp del Cielo meteorite project for science and history...

Blog of the Proyecto Secundario Liliana Maresca.