Laura Portigliatti

City of Brinkmann, Cordoba, Argentina, 1968.

She studies piano, drawing, and folklore during her childhood, until she finds the path through the visual arts, a profession she upholds through commitment throughout the years.

During her upbringing she encounters philosophy and writing, which will birth a close relationship between language and image.

Her job turns towards human problematics, the presence of the figure and even its absence, always indicating the plot of the universe it surrounds, the complexity of thought, the sharpness of the emotion and the hollowness.

Her process is transferential, is part of a journey through a path of constant search. She defines herself as “walking painter, of feet that think as they move along”.

She displayed her work both individually and collectively, she participated in galleries and workshops. Traces of her work are owned by private collectors, both domestic and foreign.

Hugs (The Way - 05/2025)

Sometimes we need our bodies to express what's overwhelming us inside.

Hugging, as a form of absolute, unconditional surrender, as a symbol of presence, disconnecting the mind and the gaze.

Everything is resolved by holding bodies together, wrapping ourselves in that gesture like a healing cloak. As the shoulder blades begin to protrude from the shirt, the neck twists, the eyelids droop, the smile blossoms, and finally we are.

Hugging is knowing about the other who authenticates our own existence, reconciling with otherness, understanding that we need each other, that we are essentially equal.

If humanity hugged more and better... what would happen?

In prehistoric contexts, they surely did it to combat the cold, to sleep together, to calm the mind, or to forget hunger. And we drifted apart...

I sense that if we could all hug each other, without fear, without prejudice, without thinking about our differences, the world would undoubtedly be a better place. To hold in that embrace those who fear surrender and let them know they can trust, that there is no exchange value in that primal act.

If there were a bank of supportive, voluntary hugs, I would like to be there, silently embracing for a long time the one seeking help; and then go have a warm soup, one that embraces me from within.

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The emotional intensity of an everyday gesture can show us the contrast between metaphor and possibility.

The hug, as a restorative ritual and as a political gesture.

A moment of intimacy that provokes the encounter with another. That indefinite otherness that invites us to project, in a gesture of surrender, the union with our own shadows.

Who do we hug? Who hugs us?

The cube as a fragmentation that symbolizes a society plagued by individualism.

The hug as an act of resistance.

The void.

Who would you hug today if you could?

Text in the video

What if the metaphor became real?

We could embrace our own shadows, project them, awaken them, transform them into light, listen to them, contain them. Because... who do we embrace when we embrace? The embrace implies hope, shelter, presence. It multiplies, makes us feel safe, light, sheltered, mends us. We envelop our emptiness in this gesture; we are purely human. Slowly, deliberately, we transform. But who are we to those who embrace us? Otherness, an absence, a previous embrace that returns. Another incompleteness. Melting into the arms of another, surrendering ourselves, is all we need as a restorative ritual, our daily act of resistance.

The Lightness as Power (NAT Art Residence 04/2024)

I step into the warm and slippery sand, a pleasurable sensation fills me. Foamy waves lap at my tired feet that dodge their eroded harvest. Each one of my steps lead to footprints, some of them quite deep, others so light that they nearly alter the washed surface. The sea always finds the way of reseting me; it certainly has the power to calm me down, to stir that inner revolution that pushes and empowers me.

Inside the caves, darkness sorrounds me along with a humid silence and a very rough floor; some kind of maternal feeling seems to embrace me. An overflow of emotions moistens my eyes followed by the sensation of inhabiting a familiar place.

I feel the need of stopping for a while and contemplate the works of those who came before me, and I recognize as my own the need for expression, natural and genuine. It is the same; we are equal, we are one. I read their gestures, visualize their lives, and a powerful tide swells within me again, just like the one by the sea. The purity of simplicity gains strength, the lightness as power.

In this crystalline moment, I perceive the insignificance of our smallness in this whole universe of stars, the implication of every act that identifies us as humans, our finitude, and the value of horizontality. I feel community; ancient voids are now non-voids.

I walk in a ritual of contemplation: birds, flowers, the silhouette of a horse against the mountain, cows and goats grazing, the same clouds, the same sun, lulling sounds, the smell of the infinite cadence of foam and salt.

I laugh, cry, dance, enjoy, I thank in an intimate ceremony.

Tonight I am my own cave; I sleep deeply, and when I wake up, I return to that sand to see my footprints blurred by the sea, those that will never fully disappear, the ones that sometime a faceless someone will walk over again.

The Lightness as Power – Tapestry + Artist´s Book

The Lightness as Power – Tapestry

Every step leaves a lasting mark, every decision, every act that identifies us as humans. Small graphics circumscribe the path that unites or separates those signs. All together it forms an incomplete journey, which will emerge and, in a faceless time, will be recognized by other walkers. The thick, untidy seams suture the parts, the wrinkles represent the plot, imperfection constitutes us. Our ability to get rid of the superfluous and consciously cohabit defines us.