Campo Garzón:
Aunties in Dis Place
December 2024
In December 2024, Niceaunties participated in an art residency at Campo Garzón, a renowned program in Pueblo Garzón, Uruguay, alongside 12 other artists. The residency culminated in the 8th Campo Garzón Art Fest, where site-specific works, performances, and talks were presented throughout the village, exploring the festival’s theme, UN/settled: Migration + Movement.
Pueblo Garzón, once a bustling stopover for gauchos and travellers moving between Argentina and Brazil, has since transformed into a small yet vibrant artistic hub. With a current population of just 170, the village is home to artists and visitors drawn to its unique character. The residency, founded by photographer, writer, and artist Heidi Lender, has become a catalyst for creative exchange, offering artists the opportunity to engage deeply with the environment and community.
Aunties in Dis Place
As part of the residency, Niceaunties developed Aunties in Dis Place, an installation and video work exploring themes of migration, cultural displacement, and adaptation. The project began as an open-ended inquiry—an attempt to observe and be influenced by local culture without preconceived notions. However, the experience of living in a new continent for the first time, without speaking the local language, and adjusting to the rhythms of rural life—amidst looming creative deadlines—became an unexpected challenge.
As an artist deeply familiar with transient spaces, Niceaunties approached the environment with curiosity, but the realities of cultural and physical displacement soon surfaced. The artist and fellow residents, all visitors themselves, navigated the delicate balance between wanting to connect and feeling the urge to retreat. The work ultimately became a reflection on the experience of being a "visitor"—of crossing thresholds into unfamiliar territories and encountering the layers of a place and its people.
The Process
The project’s development began with early morning walks through the village, documenting everyday sights—textured facades, wandering animals, and quiet moments of rural life. A video travel diary emerged, capturing these real environments and layering them with AI-generated aunties, transforming the village into an imagined space where reality and fiction intertwined. Some clips were created by training AI models on photos taken in the village, further blurring the lines between documentation and interpretation.
The installation itself played with ideas of visibility, boundaries, and layers of experience. Niceaunties was given a large house to present the work—and what better way to announce an auntie’s presence than with laundry? Large-scale auntie underwear, sewn by a local seamstress, was hung outside, immediately marking the space with a humorous yet bold visual statement. Inside, layers of translucent laundry sheets became projection surfaces, forming a maze-like path that visitors had to navigate to reach the main video work.
From the giant lingerie hanging outside to the overlapping projections on eight layers of gauze, the installation mirrored the experience of arriving in a new place—where first impressions give way to deeper layers of understanding. The final 4.5-minute video piece served as both a travel diary and a reflection on displacement, migration, and the shifting perceptions that come with stepping into the unknown.
This project is part of an ongoing exploration into themes of cultural identity, movement, and the reimagining of personal and collective narratives through AI and installation art.
Below photos by niceaunties, Dario Invernizzi , Diego Weisz, Guillermo Fernandez
