The image is void; just a soft murmur and the hollow sound of irregular knocking can be heard. Then, after a few seconds, the outline of a recognizable form gradually looms forth: an old-fashioned wristwatch, the kind that needs to be wound with a little knob at the side. A glimpse of the mechanism inside emerges as the eye is drawn to the transparent circumference of two more watches behind the one in front. Then the image dissolves and becomes black. And white again. The ticking of a clock, the sound of a man’s voice, a laugh, and the black shape looms forth again, and again the other watches appear and then disappear, all three, into the deep blackness. The constant rhythm of the watches emerging and vanishing is accompanied by the sound of voices: a man, a child, women singing and laughing, but also the sound of large groups of people, demonstrations, clapping, the chanting of slogans, or the sound of dogs barking. And always the ticking of the clock, the presence of time, which is timeless. Suddenly there is the sound of a guitar, movingly physical and intimate. Or the voice of a girl singing, the sound of a piano that seems to be taking over the rhythm of the clock until everything dissolves into yet another void image.

Watches, a coat, a t-shirt. For her first solo exhibition at the gallery, Un cuerpo al que volver / A Body to Come Back to Aimée Zito Lema took stories, objects and events from the history of herself and her family in Argentina and used these as a point of departure. In the video work Time, 2024, for instance, the voices of her father and her daughter Mia can be heard, but also audio fragments with the voices of mothers of missing people from the period of dictatorship, or the birds and barking dogs at her house in Argentina. Her work revolves around memory and remembrance. On the basis of a personal perspective, she explores the way in which history takes shape and is passed down from one generation to the next, thereby reflecting on the present. In that emphatic intertwining of present and past, new perspectives are made visible. The intertwining comes about due to what happens in the video too, namely the repeated observation of and dealing with materials and processes, with archival images, clothing, photographs, one’s own body, and thus with watches too. Until you realize that the paper on which the photograph has been printed, the watch beneath an X-ray machine, but also the body itself, each has its memory and carries with it all the (sometimes literal) impressions that it undergoes.

Aimée Zito Lema has a multimedia practice which involves sculpture, performance, video, archive material and installations. In this exhibition photography is the central medium. She focuses on subjects that deal with memory, particularly the memory that speaks through the body. Her interest concerns the physicality of images and the mix of personal and political implications in (photographic) images. The objects that she has used for this presentation relate to themes such as birth, death and time. While Un cuerpo al que volver / A Body to Come Back to puts key focus on the human body, paradoxically enough it is the absent body that appears in it as the main ‘character’. A t-shirt, a coat, a watch: they silently remind us of the people to whom they once belonged.