In her first solo exhibition at Machete, Ana Gallardo (Argentina 1958) proposes a reflection on violence in aging, researching the territory of the elderly in the current social systems.

In her work, she tries to question what is the collective role that the elderly play, if there is possibility of different behavior, nowadays, and if a change is necessary regarding this sector of society.

Gallardo questions her own closed endogamic system, what is the role of contemporary art. What to do to develop strategies that generate a simple platform of ideas and situations according to the present world in crisis.

She uses the media she knows to rethink these instances, of life and of art. She projects an idea of a school where we learn to age. Gallardo researches and meets with elderly people, who have a task they have learned now that they are older. Normally these tasks consist in activities that have been

frustrated in their youth moments, by the lack of permission, historical context, but above all, situations that belong to the world of women.

Nowadays, these activities are necessary in order to spend that dead time in the life of an “old person”. Gallardo invites the public to reflect and create new questions about the life of people, once that the industrial society has defined their productive stage as finished. This way, the artist establishes a dialogue with retired people from whom she learns certain skills.