Feliciano Centurion
Untitled
1990
Plastic toy with crochet
9 x 6.5 x 8 in; 22.9 x 16.5 x 20.3 cm
Image courtesy of Ortuzar Projects
Feliciano Centurión (1962–1996) was born in Paraguay and relocated with his family to Argentina in 1973. Centurión settled in Buenos Aires and would remain there for the rest of his life, developing a practice summarized in a letter to a friend: “I embrace … the banal, the ironic, the playful, happiness, and amusement. Images from dreams, from the everyday, obvious, with a taste of kitsch, all of which confirm to me that painting is simply an act of faith.”
This work is part of Centurión’s “Familia” series comprised of a family of plastic toy animals eccentrically dressed in hand-knit and crocheted outfits. Centurión repurposed household items, toys and other mundane objects purchased from local markets – often reclaiming forms traditionally linked to domestic, folk, and feminine labor. In his related frazadas series, Centurión treated cheap, patterned blankets as canvases, using embroidery, applique, lace, painting and collage. Several textile works feature traditional ñandutí, a lace-making technique originating from Guarianí culture that translates to “spider web.” As Chloe Wyma writes, Centurión’s blankets and clothing for dinosaur toys suggest “vulnerability and contingency” and “[t]hey are also intimately indexed to the body, offering—as the artist wrote in 1990—“warmth, shelter, protection. Affective, sensorial support.”
Centurión died of AIDS in 1996.
Provenance
Ortuzar Projects
Exhibitions
“Feliciano Centurión,” Ortuzar Projects, New York, January 9 – February 8, 2025
See also
Feliciano Centurión collection archive at the ISAA
Estate of Feliciano Centurión at Cecilia Brunson Projects
“Ñande Róga: The Feliciano Centurión Archival Collection,” ISAA, New York, March 16, – June 2, 2023
“Feliciano Centurión: Telas y Textos,” ISAA, The Duke House Exhibition, February 6 – May 19, 2023
Rebecca Jagoe, “Feliciano Centurión’s Textiles Enact New Pleasures,” Frieze, January 15, 2020
Chloe Wyma, “Feliciano Centurión at Americas Society,” Artforum online