Narcisa Hirsch on the barricades and under a microscope in New York

Microscope Gallery recently opened the first solo exhibition in New York of the work of Argentinian film artist Narcisa Hirsch, titled On the Barricades. Hirsch passed away at the age of 96 this past May, and the film art community lost one of its most important pioneering radical women, who had been receiving renewed attention in recent years with a number of high profile shows.

The exhibition focuses on several of Hirsch's early films, which she shot on Super 8 and 16mm film between the late 1960s and early 1970s, whose scope encompasses her involvement with the art scenes in Argentina and the United States of that period. In one of her earlier films, Marabunta, Hirsch documents an art happening that she organized with Marie Louise Aleman and Walter Mejía at the Teatro Coliseo in Buenos Aires in 1973, after the premiere of Michelangelo Antonioni's film Blow Up. Her cooperation with cameraman Raymundo Gleyzer in editing the footage familiarized her with the medium and opened up new vistas for experimenting.

Hirsch's experimental forays were very much informed by her contact with surrealist cinema – especially with the work of Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí – but acquired a more emphatically idiosyncratic nature after visiting the United States and researching the novel methods and stylistic innovations pioneered by the representatives of the New American Cinema movement. An example of this influence is readily apparent in two of her films on display at the exhibition: Come Out and Taller (Workshop) – both from 1974, which draw inspiration from Michael Snow's film experiments.

For the Argentinian film art community, Hirsch's trailblazing techniques and innovative interpretation of socially and culturally relevant issues have been serving as points of reference for the past several decades. Hirsch remained a marginal figure during her early creative years – “on the barricades” of the avant-garde, so to speak. The exhibition at Microscope Gallery is open through November 30, 2024. On November 21, 2024, The Lab in San Francisco will also present a retrospective on Hirsch. For more information about On the Barricades and other exhibitions at Microscope Gallery, visit their site.