The exhibit of contemporary Argentinean artist Nicola Costantino, “Rapsodia Inconclusa,”[i] at the 55th International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia in 2013 depicts glory and tragedy. More than sixty-eight years after the death of Evita, informed by generations of Argentine women, Nicola Costantino portrays the beloved national icon of Evita. Indeed, as the artist explains, the installations highlight both Evita’s glory and her tragedy, in an unusual way that must not go unexamined. “Rapsodia Inconclusa’s” video installations and kinetic sculpture tell the story of a woman, Eva Duarte de Perón, in a series of aesthetic encounters that frame the ambiguous or inconclusive narrative of what we can and can’t see. Just like a rhapsody that is a stitched together free form of song composition, Constantino stitches life-moments of Evita to reimagine and reinterpret an inconclusive end, neither positive nor negative. What did Evita represent for the Argentine women?
