Nama Nika Tiisto is a brief symbolic survey of the La Roma neighborhood. All the pieces produced and assembled here say something about the neighborhood, or say something to the neighborhood, without any attempt at quantitative exhaustiveness. Nirsa commented that she observed the territory more in its capacity as an exquisite cadaver—“literally,” she said, “a delicious dead body”—and recorded it like a tourist collecting more or less obvious details for her photo album. “In an album, there are inevitably good and bad memories,” she noted, “but the entire journey is only perceived in the empty space between photo and photo.” Indeed, the pieces on display project observations and speculations that seem to complement each other to tell a story that encompasses a transcendental time-space and, at the same time, everyday or even ordinary. In that sense, Nirsa affirmed that the collection of images should be considered a map of references. This map, in any case, does not indicate any path; “it only mobilizes associations that were previously stagnant.”

Nirsa (Patagonia, 1984)

«Is drawing first or second nature? Can we be genetically determined or disabled to draw? Does our hand "think" when we draw? What is the function of drawing? To communicate? As we contemplate Nirsa's illustrations, we are confronted with the problem of language; or should we say the virtues of language? Words and images seem to establish irrational dialogues throughout Nirsa's narratives. Are we really going anywhere with all this? All the references are rather familiar and mundane, and yet confusing... But we keep looking, and the world keeps turning with all its controversies, felicities, and atrocities.» —MH