Neuronal Cartographies is presented as a suspended, fragile, and expansive structure, in which thread—minimal yet persistent as a material—becomes language, memory, and thought. The work unfolds a network of fibers that seems to float in space, tracing an unstable geography: a map that does not fix territories, but rather records movements, connections, and tensions.
Human beings have the capacity to process information through different stimuli, which come to be transformed into lived experiences, integrating an accumulation of acquired knowledge.
In this way, the work inscribes itself within an intimate genealogy of textile making. Thread, learned in childhood as an inherited and affective gesture, is here re-signified as a cognitive tool. Each stitch condenses time, experience, and repetition; each strand acts as a line of thought that joins, bifurcates, or is interrupted. Thus, the textile ceases to be a support and becomes a process: a form of writing that precedes language, in which the body thinks through the hands.
The work visually translates the complexity of human thought through an organic metaphor. Inspired by neural networks and systems of collective organization—such as the invisible routes of ant colonies—the piece proposes an analogy between the functioning of the brain and the logic of weaving. There is no center or hierarchy: meaning emerges from interconnection. Thought thus appears as a relational, mutable phenomenon, always under construction.
The flexible materiality of the textile reinforces this idea of mental plasticity. The network can be stretched, undone, and reconfigured, in the same way that experience rewrites neural maps. In this gesture, the work poses a critical and open-ended question: is it possible to retrain the mind, to imagine other pathways, to think differently?
The work affirms textile as a contemporary territory for reflection, where memory, the present, and becoming intertwine within a sensitive cartography of thought.
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CV
DEBORAH FAFIF
Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Currently lives and works in Buenos Aires.
EDUCATION ● 1979–1980 Architecture – Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, University of Belgrano, Buenos Aires, Argentina. ● 1983–2000 Workshops with Raúl Marengo, Enio Iommi, Nora Correas, Raúl Santana, Enrique Aguirrezabala. Art Theory Workshop with Jorge López Anaya. ● 2019 Art Clinic with Andrés Waissman. ● 2025 Art Clinic with Manuel Ameztoy
AWARDS ● 1998 VII National Textile Art Exhibition – 1st Honorable Mention. ● 1992 Benito Quinquela Martín Exhibition – Sívori Museum / Museum of Fine Arts of La Boca (Buenos Aires, Argentina) – 1st Prize.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS ● 2022 Confluences, Villa Carmen, Tigre District, Argentina. ● 2021 Mending with My Skins: A Habitable Fabric, Pasaje 865, Buenos Aires, Argentina. ● 2019 The Many Ways to Combat Nothingness, Quimera, Buenos Aires, Argentina. ● 2019 Seconds, Minutes, Hours, Days… Millennia, CAJA, Jujuy Provincial Government, Argentina. ● 2019 Seconds, Minutes, Hours, Days… Millennia, Buenos Aires City Legislature, Argentina. ● 2018 Seconds, Minutes, Hours, Days… Millennia, Borges Cultural Center, Buenos Aires, Argentina. ● 1998 Endoscopy, Recoleta Cultural Center, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
GROUP EXHIBITIONS / Fairs (selection) 2025 PintaPhoto. ● 2025 Aqua Miami. ● 2025 AAF Boston ● 2023-2025 ART on PAPER, New York, USA. ● 2024 Neither Head Nor Tail: A December Night's Dream, Cecilia Caballero Gallery, Buenos Aires, Argentina. ● 2020 Another Fair, Episode 2: Superpowered Women, SOA, Buenos Aires, Argentina. ● 2020 This Art, Punta del Este, Uruguay. ● 2019 Art Lima, SOA, Lima, Peru. ● 1997 Before, Under, Behind…, Borges Cultural Center, Buenos Aires, Argentina. ● 1995 A, E, I or O, Recoleta Cultural Center, Buenos Aires, Argentina. ● 1994 Mom Knits in the Center, Recoleta Cultural Center, Buenos Aires, Argentina. ● 1994 Dialogues, Museum of Modern Art, Maldonado, Uruguay. ● 1993 Confrontations, Banco Patricios Foundation, Buenos Aires, Argentina. ● 1993 IV Benito Quinquela Martín Salon, Sívori Museum / Museum of Fine Arts of La Boca, Buenos Aires, Argentina. ● 1993 Enio Iommi Workshop, Giesso Space, Buenos Aires, Argentina. ● 1993 International Meeting of Mini Textiles, Xalapa, Mexico. ● 1992 Archimboldo Gallery, Maldonado, Uruguay. ● 1992 IX National Textile Art Salon, Palais de Glace, Buenos Aires, Argentina. ● 1990 II Benito Quinquela Martín Salon, Sívori Museum / Museum of Fine Arts of La Boca, Buenos Aires, Argentina. ● 1990 Swiss-Argentine Foundation, Museum of Modern Art, Buenos Aires, Argentina. ● 1990 VIII National Textile Art Exhibition, Palais de Glace, Buenos Aires, Argentina. ● 1988 VII National Textile Art Exhibition, Palais de Glace, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
