It was twelve years ago at a party, in the middle of a lot of people.
At that time, Lautaro Camino,
born in 1986
and a resident of Villa Crespo, produced videos with the actress and comedian Bimbo Godoy.
Lorenzo Anzoátegui (
1980, born and raised in Palermo
) approached him to invite him to another party he was organizing.
They talked, became friends
and a few months later they were already putting together theater projects for the old Matienzo Cultural Center.
From that beginning that looks so “under”, fastforward to the present, skipping a decade.
Currently,
they are central protagonists of the latest editions of ArteBA
, the most important art fair in the country and one of the largest in the world, and these days, they enjoy the
scholarship that the Williams Foundation and Mozarteum Argentino awarded them
for a residence at the
Cité Internationale des Arts
in Paris;
Also,
having won the Arthaus and Amigos del Bellas Artes performing arts award
.
“That was where we had the first opportunity to show ourselves,” says Lolo.
Between March and June 2011 in that space, we did between three and four shows at a time, all of them were
small experimental theater pieces
.
One of those works we did with Bimbo and it was based on the autobiography of Ricky Martin".
Lolo continues: "We had both studied cinema and we had gone to the theater side. However, we were always more people who like theater and cinema before people who make theater and cinema.
What we did were approximations, but they weren't anything like that.
This is how
performance was born in our lives, later we added videos
and the tools of what we studied and what we were trained in ended up being applied to our art”.
i-Sexy, work at ArteBA in 2017. Spectators could put on 3D glasses and participate in virtual sex scenes.
-From that beginning to the present, already positioned as one of the most important artist duos in Argentina, what made you take the leap?
-Lauti: In 2012 we had the first opportunity doing a performance next to the La Casona theater, in a space coordinated by Maruja Bustamante and Gael Policano Rossi (also known as AstroMostra), two very important people in our beginnings.
It was a very rare work, based on some poems by Gael, and a German, director of a cultural center, came to see it;
At the exit, the German was full of praise, he said that we were the future... There was also the director of the Experimentation Center of the Teatro Colón, who stood up.
The German never called us, but
we began to do a project in Colón.
-Lolo: After that
we did a contemporary opera
, we had no idea what it was, we had to
to find out.
We had no experience in the genre, we had barely seen a few fragments.
That somewhat defines our work: we embark on projects trying to do something that at first we don't know how to do.
"We embark on projects trying to do something that at first we don't know how to do"
Lolo Anzoategui, artist
-Since the '90s, art has worked a lot on this idea: do it however you like, but do it. Is there any limit to that?
-Lauti: We are not “talented”.
We do not believe in virtuosity.
We have ideas, that's all.
And in contemporary art, ideas are the most important thing.
They always ask us when we are going to paint a picture.
Well, we're not going to paint a picture, we don't know how to do it
, but we made a video where we laughed about it, about what we would be like or how we imagine we would be painting a picture together.
Lolo: What we always seek is to surprise.
Being two, we have a
first filter that is that of the other
.
One has an idea, tells the other, and if the other is surprised, then we know we found something.
If we have a talent, it is a talent for surprises.
"We don't believe in virtuosity. We have ideas, that's all. And in contemporary art, ideas are the most important thing."
Lauti Camino, artist
Surprise!
And of course they have a talent for surprises.
In their fourth season at ArteBA, last year,
they presented a double video: two paintings facing each other
, each one a screen: on one side, Lolo dressed as a Renaissance artist;
on the other, Lauti with the same look.
They paint –or make them paint– looking at each other.
Irony.
As they were asked for a painting, they made this video painting each other, which was a success at ArteBA: “Self-portrait”.
It was one of the most visited and shared works on social networks.
The same thing had happened in 2019, when they presented
Me crazy egg
, an installation that included people.
Before, in 2017, they had debuted at ArteBA with a performance that included a virtual reality viewer and
the simulation of having sex in the middle of the fair.
The following year, they repeated the tool, but this time the virtual reality cases were for the public.
-With these proposals they managed to become visible in a context that includes the participation of four hundred artists. The success with critics and the public is evident, but how are they treated by their peers?
-Lolo: There are people who study art from the age of seven.
Myself, if I had had that training, I would look at our work and wonder what it is, where we came from.
I fully empathize with a critical look at ours.
But the good thing about contemporary art is that it is
a world that rewards the qualities that make each artist unique
.
It's not about what techniques you use, but about being able to create something unique.
"It's not about what techniques you use, it's about being able to create something unique."
Lolo, artist
-Lauti: Since we started they criticize us for that, we are used to it and it even amuses us.
When we made the fried egg a lady came up to ask what she was.
I didn't tell him it was art, I just described what he saw: I told him
“it's a fried egg with French fries”.
“Ahhhh,” said the lady.
She loved it!"
Nothing more was needed, no explanation, no theory.
Just the impact of that image.
long live the show
The Argentine show business, magazine theater, television divas and pop culture are undoubtedly the trademarks of this duo who knew how to turn their interests into a work admired (and very well sold) throughout the
world
.
They dedicated the exhibition El mundo del spectacle
(2019)
to television ;
to the opera,
Carmen
(2019);
to the cinema and the musical,
Liza
(2023), and to the magazine theater,
Localidades exhaustadas
(2021).
They can even
appropriate pop icons like Coca Cola
and label the bottles Moria and Susana.
Nac & pop version of the Pop Art that Andy Warhol made famous in the '60s.
Lolo explains: "We grew up in the era of that aesthetic: shows like
What the Turk took, More pinas than the gallutas
... But also with TV that had Moria Casán doing
Moria Banana
, Susana at her best moment, Mirtha... That world of showgirls, sketches… It was a very rich time to be a gay child watching TV.
It is an aesthetic framework that we preserve.
We like how the Argentine show copies foreign formats and adapts them.
We do something similar: appropriate the appropriation.
In Argentina we are used to doing things despite not having the tools to do it”.
Lauti and Lolo.
They are influenced by the aesthetics of the programs of the '90s.
"We like how the Argentine show copies foreign formats and adapts them. We do something similar: appropriate appropriation. In Argentina we are used to doing it despite not having the tools."
Lolo, artist
-Why is ArteBA always talking about you?
-Lauti: It is not easy to stand out in an art fair like ArteBA.
Next to it you can have a Berni painting.
In the Barro gallery, which represents us, we share space with the Mondongo duo.
If you want people to remember your work, you have to think of something that will make an impact, because there is a huge overdose of information.
When we made the fried egg, we thought about that, that it had to have an impact.
We always look for works that are easy to explain
, easy to sell, and that people are drawn to.
We didn't even think we were going to sell it, however we sold the fried egg: the costumes, the egg itself and the instructions to do the performance.
Why do they make art?
-Lolo: Because it is easy for us.
It's obviously a job, and we work a lot, but it's hard to put out a fire, go to the office every day, or raise five kids.
We are privileged to be artists in the world of contemporary art
, which is very small.
We do it to share what we like and share our obsessions, among ourselves and outwardly, with the public.
I can't imagine our life without expressing ourselves.
"I can't imagine our life without expressing ourselves"
Lolo, artist
-Lauti: I like that answer because it seems incendiary, but
I don't know how easy it is to make art
.
I never wondered why we do it.
I can't think of anything else we can do.
The melons were arranged with the movement.
We did some film, theater, writing, but we were never actors, directors or writers, instead we were grabbing a bit of all that.
Art ended up being the only medium that allowed us to create a community around it.
-
Was there that "What are you going to live on, son?"
in their families?
-Lauti:
I studied Biology
for three years at the UBA.
She had a very high average.
My mom couldn't understand it, but I didn't want to dedicate myself to research, I didn't want a laboratory life.
I went to the cinema so that she would stay calm, I did the race quickly and with that she calmed down.
Then when I got into art, she got restless again, but today she's our number one fan.
-Lolo: Because also our thing is not to paint a picture, which is something that people understand and has its prestige.
We do video and performance
, it's not easy to understand.
-Lauti: You say it's easy, but if we were painters or sculptors it would be easy... The difficult thing is to do something unclassifiable.
There is a lot of work, a lot of effort and sacrifice in what we do, but it is also true that it is immediate, that we have an idea and we can make it happen very quickly.
Also, today people are a little more familiar with what we do, but in our first show, a lady came up and asked what that was, we told her it was an art
gallery, she replied "I owe you art."
I'm crazy crazy: It was the most instagrammed work in the history of ArteBA in 2019.
-How is your creative process?
-Lolo: We
don't have a theory, we're not interested
, we hate those curatorial texts that say everything without saying anything, that try to explain something that doesn't have to be explained.
When we have to be curators, we prefer to include a fictional text than a theoretical one.
In any case, we enjoy and are surprised when they elaborate interpretations of our work from theory.
Lauti: Our way of working is the other way around.
We don't start from a concept or a drop in the line, we don't want to say something with our work and then we make it concrete.
We start with the idea, with the work itself, and in any case later we go back and discover what we wanted to say.
We never start by saying “We are going to talk about injustice”... We work, we do and, in any case, later we understand or others will see what we are talking about.
We realize what we do as we go.
"We hate those curatorial texts that say everything without saying anything, that try to explain something that doesn't have to be explained."
Lolo, artist
-In international contemporary art there is already a tradition of duos dedicated to pop art: Gilbert & George, Pierre et Gilles, Elmgreen & Dragset and others. But, what are your references within Argentine art?
-Lolo: Alberto Pasolini, Edgardo Giménez, Jorge de la Vega, Mondongo… Painting is a technology with which we do not identify, but we do not think it is exhausted or anything like that.
On the contrary.
She's super alive.
But we imagine ourselves very far from that.
Our fantasy is to have a television camera from the seventies
, not to make a painting.
-In recent times the use of Artificial Intelligence to make art is spreading. That brought about a new debate about the validity of these works, which only require someone to upload an order on a platform so that the system takes care of everything…
-Lauti: You put “Oil painting of ninja turtles in the Middle Ages” in an app and
Artificial Intelligence puts together the picture for you.
It's crazy.
But it's like everything: television did not kill cinema, Netflix did not kill television, etc.
Artificial Intelligence, to make art, is in its infancy and
it is fascinating to think how far it can go.
-Lolo: Are machines going to replace artists?
Hopefully.
I wouldn't like to see it, but
I like to fantasize about a planet totally dominated by machines.
"Mirtha is you", by Lolo and Lauti.
The work was part of the exhibition "El mundo del espectàculo".
-What does it mean to make art?
-Lolo: Why does it have to continue having movie theaters?
It's not out of romance, it's simply
because you go to a movie theater with other people who are looking for the same thing as you.
The same happens in the theater or with any art.
It's great to share something and find people who like the same thing.
This is how you also become friends and people become friends with each other.
Bowie or Natalia Oreiro fans make friends with each other.
Art forms communities and through the Internet today those communities can be closer.
Lauti:
That's why we are artists, because we want to share
.
We like to make a monument to what we like and share it with others.
Last time we organized a birthday for Nacha Guevara.
She wasn't there, but we did the same.
We put up videos of her career, we danced, we shared our fanaticism.
She is our favorite artist.
"Art forms communities and through the Internet today those communities can be closer."
Lolo, artist
Lolo: There is no division between our life and our work.
All day we are talking about what we do
, we become obsessed with something until it is a work and we share it, only then do we leave it and move on to the next.
Lolo and Lauti do not divide their life from their art.
/Photo: Juano Tesone
-They live together, work together, participate in events in pairs… How do they make the bond last?
-Lolo: It's intense, but it also makes the job easier:
there's no difference between what we like to do and what we do.
We have weird schedules, we can work at any time.
Sometimes it happens to us that one wants to work and the other doesn't, so we empower ourselves.
We don't do everything together either.
Everyone usually has their responsibilities.
I usually deal more with the pre-production of the video and Lauti directs the filming on set.
-Lauti: We are already “Lolo y Lauti”, when I introduce myself I say: “I am Lauti, from Lolo y Lauti”.
Sometimes they confuse us and tell us names backwards.
But that's it, we are two
.
No one has their separate project, so the egos do not compete.
We constantly bounce ideas off each other: we have no problem saying that what the other proposed is not good, just as we need each other to move forward when we find something that we both like.
Without Lolo I would never finish anything
, I would spend my time jumping from one project to another, without reaching the end of any.
Anyone can have a brilliant idea, the issue is to make it come true and above all that it remains similar to the idea you had
look too
Mondongo: a successful couple for love and art
Vandalizing works of art, a form of protest that was born more than 1,000 years ago
The artist Julio Le Parc, at 94 years old: "Today the danger is that the networks replace life"