The National Museum of Fine Arts exhibits the winning works of the 2025 Arthaus Awards.

The Arthaus Awards are beginning to establish themselves in the cultural scene, becoming a classic trend-setter in contemporary Argentine art . The third edition The winners were two artists from the Federal Capital and one from the province of Corrientes .

This time, video art was the conceptual expression of this competition, which stimulates creativity and renews its offering each year after the initial success with Electronic Arts, followed by the Object as thematic axes for the works. The video projects "In the Forest" (first prize, by Ignacio Masllorens), "Inventory of the Invisible" (second prize, by Maia Navas), and "The Fight Against Death" ( third prize, by Pablo Zicarello) were awarded over 300 works submitted by artists from across the country.

The award-winning works were selected by a jury of specialists : María Teresa Constantín (artistic director of Arthaus); Andrés Duprat (director of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes); Mariana Marchesi (artistic director of the MNBA); and renowned artists Gabriela Golder and Sebastián Díaz Morales.

The awards ceremony took place yesterday in Room 33 of the National Museum of Fine Arts, where the works were exhibited for the first time, along with the winning artists . Leonardo Cifelli, Secretary of Culture of the Nation, attended the ceremony.

In this public-private synergy , the winning works received funding from the Arthaus Foundation , which also supports the process to bring them to life. They will remain in the possession of the artists. They can also be viewed free of charge until August 3 on the first floor (room 33) of the Bellas Artes, located at Avenida del Libertador 1473, in Recoleta.

“We always try to find a different format, and video was a challenge . I'm very happy to bring video to the Museum of Fine Arts because there's a debate about whether it's a major or minor art form, that art has its value, and if it doesn't, then it's not art. It's also unique to our country, because in other countries, video has a place. There's also the museum's patriotic commitment to supporting us,” said Andrés Buhar, director and founder of Arthaus.

“Masllorens's 'In the Forest' condenses three decades into repeated narratives that reveal the passage of time, the persistence of certain gestures, and the irreplaceable absence of a voice. Zicarello's 'The Fight Against Death' breaks down a Flemish painting into visual fragments and interweaves it with a contemporary film ritual, establishing a dialogue between times, symbols, and modes of resistance. Navas's 'Inventory of the Invisibles' uses technologies outside the visible spectrum to imagine forms of life and listening between fossils and humans, between murmurs and specters,” summarized jury member Gabriela Golder, one of the winners of the first Arthaus Prize in 2023.

Clarín spoke with the three artists, who explained the concept behind their winning works. Ignacio Masllorens received first prize for his work "In the Forest." His work had begun 30 years ago, a project that had initially remained unfinished.

“Thirty years ago, I started doing the play without knowing I was going to do a play . I was 25 years old, a student: I had the idea of ​​filming four people close to me to tell a classic tale in a fragmented way, inspired by some other things in cinema,” Masllorens recalls.

The author wanted to make a short film , but he didn't like the result. "I left it there; I didn't do anything. I was very inexperienced," he admits. Ten years later, he rewatched the footage . "I said, 'What if I film them again?' The passage of time made me see the material differently, and I said, 'In 10 years, we'll film it again.'"

Her idea came to fruition when the 2025 Arthaus Awards came up, with video as the conceptual backbone. “I read the rules and said: this is perfect for this work. It gives me the resources to finish it and mount it properly. So, I applied and was extremely lucky to win. Plus, I managed to show this work in ideal conditions. I had the full support of Arthaus and the Fine Arts Institute,” Masllorens says.

'In the Forest,' the winning entry, consists of four film recordings of four people, repeated every 10 years in different formats . Each person (or performer) embodies a character from Charles Perrault's fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood. The story of a 10-year-old girl, a 20-year-old girl, a 30-year-old girl, and a 40-year-old girl can be seen simultaneously.

In this way, Masllorens recorded Andrea Meizoso, Diego Hernán Olmos, Eduardo Masllorens and Pilar Llonch over time in VHS, digital, HD formats and also in video calls (through Google Meet), since one participant in his work lived abroad.

Each member offers their perspective on Little Red Riding Hood, the Big Bad Wolf, the hunter, and the grandmother , characters from Perrault's historic tale. It's a record of each person's journey through time on four different screens, so each person's story may vary depending on their age, mannerisms, testimony, and perspective.

" It's a person's life summarized in four screens . The video lasts 15 minutes and starts over again. It includes the entire story of Little Red Riding Hood as a child, as well as the story of the wolf, the hunter, and the entire story of the grandmother," explains its creator.

The winning work measures seven meters long by one and a half meters high but is not yet fully finished . According to the artist, the use of Artificial Intelligence could be added as a fifth element in the next 10 years. A new format for his magnificent creation.

“It's an open project; it's going to expand in 10 years. For me, it's a lot. I started doing this without knowing it would end. I couldn't have asked for anything better than to have ended here, with this recognition, with the first prize in this place. For me, it's a dream. I still can't believe it,” said Masllorens, the top winner of the 2025 Arthaus Prize.

'Inventory of the Invisible' is a project Maia Navas has been wanting to undertake for some time . "It's based on a truly astonishing event: the discovery of extinct species of megafauna in Toropí (Corrientes), 150 kilometers from the city of Corrientes," its creator announces.

The site is a paleontological deposit where fossils from the Pleistocene period were found. "The megafauna found there is very similar to what we find in Africa today. I had to realize that 35 million years ago, this was much closer," explains the Corrientes artist.

First, she immersed herself in the paleontological universe and then contacted scientists from Conicet (National Institute of Technology) in her province who have been conducting research on these fossils for decades. "I was interested in doing it because I wanted to be in this place, a place I've visited many times and love: it feels like another planet, a highly recommended place to visit," says Navas, who holds a degree in Arts and Technology with a focus on audiovisuals, a master's degree in Contemporary Latin American Aesthetics, and a degree in Psychology.

This is how his artistic idea took shape: “ I liked this dialogue that could emerge in a way, as if it were a speculative fable in a dialogue between humans, fossils and also some current species that put the problem of extinction under a certain tension.”

"Inventory of the Invisible" is a piece exhibited on a giant screen, lasting 18 minutes , and filmed with two cameras: one is more conventional, which films at night, and the other uses a night-vision camera that can film using the infrared spectrum.

" Added to this is an ultraviolet flashlight that I was able to acquire thanks to the award . Combining these two poles of the spectrum generates a reaction, a photoluminescence in some materials that produces these very strange colors that are not what we can usually see at first glance," explains the artist, winner of the second Arthaus Prize 2025.

According to Navas, being among the three winners was a huge surprise, a huge joy. “A lot of highly experienced colleagues applied, but I had a lot of confidence because of the subject matter addressed at this specific site and the type of technology used to create the project, which gave it a uniqueness. I had faith in myself,” he acknowledges.

In 2006, Pablo Zicarello visited an exhibition of Rembrandt paintings at the Bellas Artes Museum . However, his attention was drawn to the painting "The Struggle Against Death," by an anonymous Belgian artist from the year 1400.

"When I looked closely , I saw a painting of a crowd fighting a skeleton : it was a representation of death. I was struck by the fact that everyone was holding something. A sword, a guitar, a vase, etc.," the artist told Clarín.

That idea led him to film the Pachamama ritual during the Valle march in Tucumán . "I also paid attention only to what the hands were doing. It's a comparison of the activity of the hands in relation to the idea of ​​fighting death," explains the artist, who is also a draftsman and specialist in photography.

When the Arthaus Awards rules came out on video, he came up with the idea of ​​presenting his project: unifying the concept of the fight against death through two films and exhibiting them on two different screens: one in color and one in black and white.

In this way, Zicarello was able to compare the work with the hands used in the Pachamama ritual in Super 8 format. He then filmed the painting that had captivated him so much. To do so, he requested permission to film it at the Bellas Artes Museum.

His recording shows the details of each artist's hands, a slow, close-up tour, without showing the entire painting, as if he were analyzing it through a magnifying glass.

“When I saw that painting, I thought of making that film: it's a black and white Super 8 of the Pachamama ritual , with the utopian idea of ​​putting the painting on one side and the projection on the other to make a comparison of cultures, of technology, of different approaches to the idea of ​​death, but they have in common the manual work, the idea of ​​using tools, of human creation from the hands,” says its creator.

Each video in "The Fight Against Death" lasts 7 minutes and is filmed on a loop . The sequence is then repeated. The Pachamama video is shot in Super 8 black and white, and the Belgian painting is shot in digital HD in color. Zicarello's work earned him the third prize at Arthaus.

“For me, it's very important to show the work, and in a place like the Bellas Artes, it's great because a wide variety of people come, very different, and of all kinds. It's a thoughtful setting for viewing works,” Zicarello said.

"The important thing about these awards is that there are more of them. Three projects were selected from 300; many of those projects are as good and deserve as much of an award as this one," he concluded.

The Arthaus Visual Arts Awards were launched in 2023 with the aim of stimulating art through diverse expressions , based on each year's proposal. In the first edition, the winners in the Electronic Arts category were Rodolfo Marqués, Gabriela Golder, and Diego Alberti.

The second edition was held in 2024 and was dedicated to Objects , with more than 260 projects submitted by artists from across the country. The winners were: Carlota Beltrame (Tucumán), Juan Rey (Buenos Aires), and Santiago Viale (Córdoba).

In this public-private partnership , the winning projects receive funding from the cultural institution located at Bartolomé Mitre 434 to create the works, which will remain in the possession of each artist. They are also exhibited for 30 days at the MNBA, the state museum and the most important in Argentina.