From the Hallway to the Warehouse: A Queer Perspective on Art and the Development of Its Industry in Buenos Aires

Abstract

This article examines the shift in the physical location of art galleries by tracing (or highlighting the absence of) connections between the hallway of El Rojas and the contemporary warehouses used by galleries such as Ruth Benzacar and Barro. It proposes a queer studies perspective that draws on Sara Ahmed’s queer phenomenology and Jack Halberstam’s narratives of queer art of failure, with the aim of situating the adoption of the warehouse within a larger narrative: the triumphalist history of the art industry. In this direction, the article attends to the mutations in the circulation of art that occurred between the hallway of the 1990s and the warehouses of the new millennium, sketching guidelines that outline the success story of the art industry while simultaneously seeking alternatives that allow us to speculate on other possibilities for the development of art—possibilities that project it toward an uncertain future, detached from the meanings constructed through the decade-based periodization of art history and the relational approach of sociology. In this regard, Marcelo Pombo’s two antisocial theses are analyzed as a starting point for exploring a queer ontology that seeks to reorient discussions on Buenos Aires art toward aesthetics, in response to the expansion of the industry that is projected onto it.