- Argentinian siblings Gonzalo Silva and Susana Silva will take part in a panel discussion on their exhibit at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art.
- Their exhibit, "Instrumentos de silencio," explores the intersection of cultural interchange and music.
- The exhibit was previously displayed in New York City and Berkeley, California, before coming to Utah.
SALT LAKE CITY — A brother-sister duo from Argentina is in Salt Lake City for a panel discussion on their art exhibit examining the intersection of cultural interchange and music.
"Instrumentos de silencio," on display at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, "explores how cultures meet, collide and coexist through sound, music and the technologies used to record and transmit language," reads a press release on the exhibit. The artists are Gonzalo Silva and Susana Silva, siblings from Buenos Aires, Argentina, and they'll take part in a panel discussion on the exhibit on Friday, Jan. 30, at 6 p.m. at the museum, located at 20 S. West Temple.
The artists were inspired in part by French philosopher Bernard Stiegler and Bolivian sociologist Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, they said in a statement. Stiegler maintains that "the collective memory" of a culture can be expressed in its technical objects, while Rivera offers a perspective in which European and Indigenous American thought coexist "in a conflictive manner."
"With these two ideas in mind, we set out to investigate certain events in South American history where this tension becomes visible — where music functions as a technology of domination that erases preexisting memories and whose own cultural development involves processes of transformation or adaptation," they said.
The exhibit, now in its third iteration, opened on Jan. 16 in Salt Lake City and will be on display through Feb. 28. It was previously on display in New York City and Berkeley, California.
"Rather than offering a unified narrative, 'Instrumentos de silencio' highlights moments of tension and fragmentation, acknowledging the lasting effects of colonization — including the disruption and erasure of Indigenous knowledge — while also examining the creative possibilities that emerge from cultural exchange," reads the press release on the exhibit.
The artwork comes in a range of media, including photographs, "intervened objects," etched plexiglass, hand-cut paper, digital collage and more.
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Voces de Utah
Looking for more news from Utah's Latino community? Visit our Voces de Utah section for more stories, events and features.Friday's free event will feature a visual presentation by the Silvas on the exhibit, followed by a discussion involving the artists moderated by Amy Ortiz, a journalist for the Deseret News. The Silvas and their project were the recipients in 2023 of the Ariel Bybee Endowment prize offered through the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts.
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