In this text, the Venezuelan artist Antonieta Sosa describes the contents of her installation Cas(A)nto (Caracas: Museo de Bellas Artes, 2000). She takes two of her obsessions, “the internal and the external” and uses these opposites to work concepts of space and representation of her house, her view of the world, her past and her present and of the uncertain future. Her internal world, what is “visceral, animal and human,” is represented by the house, its hearth and its spatial distribution, as well as its chairs. Her external world, on the other hand, consists of sensory data: it is the space around the house, the room in the museum and the walls that delimit it along with “the back patio,” where the artist’s past and present converge. The balcony implies the image of what is perceived outside: the garden, the park where the museum is located, the city.

This text is one of the four included in the catalogue of the multimedia installation/exhibition Cas(A)nto, by Antonieta Sosa (b. 1940) (Caracas: Museo de Bellas Artes, 2000). It presents the thinking of the Venezuelan artist herself, jotted down in the style of a diary. These notes explain the content of the exhibition and the links of the different areas and objects to her psychic and her daily world, as well as to her poetics, concept of art and the artist’s role. This text is important in two ways. On the one hand, Sosa provides a detailed iconographic description of her work. On the other hand, it is interesting as a primary source about one of her most complete and complex works from a conceptual, formal, and symbolic perspective. It is unusual to find a document of this kind in an exhibition catalogue.

The other texts in the catalogue are “Antonieta Sosa: Antropometrías de la casa” by Luis Enrique Pérez Oramas [see the ICAA digital archive (doc. No. 1157705)]; an essay by the curator Carmen Hernández “Los múltiples tránsitos de Cas(A)nto” (doc. No. 1157721) and an interview conducted by María Ramos “Una persona silenciosa que se autoexpone descarnadamente.”

Another critical text by Carmen Hernández on Sosa’s work, accessible in the ICAA digital archive, is the essay “Antonieta Sosa: La medida de lo personal,” which is a study of Sosa’s design in the group exhibition Desde el cuerpo: alegorías de lo femenino (doc. No. 1155378). Also, see the essays “Del cuerpo al vacío: Una situación de Antonieta Sosa” (doc. No. 865819) and “¿Y por qué no?” (doc. No. 865572), both descriptions by the artist herself of some plans for “actions.”