Topographies of Memory is an exhibition by Carla Abilés and Paula Punto, with curatorial text by Ayelén Ruiz, exploring how memory takes form through materials, gestures, and artistic processes.

Bringing together textiles, images, objects, personal archives, and performance, the exhibition unfolds as a dialogue between two artists whose practices engage with migration, displacement, and personal history. Rather than constructing a linear narrative, the project proposes an open structure where the works respond to and challenge one another.

Through different materials and artistic languages, the exhibition investigates how memory is deposited in objects and gestures, and how artistic work can reveal traces of time, transformation, and belonging.

Rather than illustrating specific memories, the works explore their forms: how an affection can be drawn, how absence can be represented, and what geometry intimacy might take. Memory appears here as surface, volume, and structure, a territory we inhabit even when we cannot see it.

Conceived as an evolving process, Topographies of Memory expands beyond the exhibition itself through a series of collaborations and public activities that activate the space and invite audiences to engage with memory as a collective experience.

Artists

Carla Abilés

Carla Abilés (1988) is a multidisciplinary artist from northern Argentina. She studied Fine Arts at the School of Arts in Salta and has participated in artistic training programs including the Art Clinics of the Fondo Nacional de las Artes and the Centro de Investigaciones Artísticas. Her practice explores the intersections between textiles, migration, and collective knowledge from a feminist perspective. Through manual processes and research-based methodologies, she investigates how textile traditions can hold memory, history, and forms of transmission across generations.

Paula Punto

Paula Punto (1991) is an Argentine artist based in Berlin. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts with a specialization in Sculpture from the National University of Rosario. Working across performance, photography, writing, and sculptural thinking, her practice approaches artistic creation as a form of sensitive research where the body becomes a site of experience and writing operates as a tool for inquiry.

Curator

Ayelén Ruiz

Ayelén Ruiz is an Argentine curator and cultural manager trained in Curatorial Studies at the Universidad Nacional de las Artes and the Universidad Nacional de Rosario. She has participated in several curatorial programs including the PAC Curatorial Program and RESET at Fundación Proa. She works as an independent curator and cultural advisor for art collections across Latin America and collaborates with art publications such as Artishock and Hipermedula.

Public Program

Topographies of Memory unfolds as an evolving process activated through performance, writing, and collective encounters. The public program expands the exhibition beyond the displayed works, understanding memory as something that is embodied, shared, and continuously reshaped.

Thursday, April 9 · 18:00–20:00. Opening

Opening of the exhibition with artists Carla Abilés and Paula Punto, and curator Ayelén Ruiz.

Sunday, April 12 · 16:00–19:00. Performance Day

An afternoon dedicated to the body as archive and ritual:

• PROMESERA – Flor Cualquiera
• UNHEIMLICH – Paula Punto

Saturday, April 18 · 16:00–18:00. Poetry Workshop (in Spanish)
“El único fuego que no se extingue” – Sol Narváez

A writing workshop exploring memory, displacement, and emotional landscapes through poetry. Suggested donation: 10€

Monday, April 20 · 18:30. Artist Talk

Conversation with the artists and curator in the framework of the Art Intensive Berlin (AIB) residency..

Team

Artistic Direction: Marcela Villanueva
Artists: Carla Abiles, Paula Punto
Curator: Ayelen Ruiz
Production: Florencia Freis
Mediation: Alejandra Atalah
Topologies of Memory is a Berlin-based project by Karne Kunst gUG, under the artistic direction of Marcela Villanueva. Supported by the Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt des Landes Berlin and carried out at Bardo Projektraum, Berlin.

About Bardo Projektraum

Bardo Projektraum is a Berlin-based platform for contemporary art shaped by the Latin American diaspora. Is a space in Berlin dedicated to artistic experimentation and cultural work rooted in lived experience. Its program is shaped by artists, curators, and cultural workers whose practices emerge from migration, displacement, feminist struggle, queer kinship, and decolonial imaginaries. Rather than showcasing diversity as a fixed category, Bardo functions as a platform for situated cultural production—supporting processes, research-based practices, and collective forms of knowledge outside institutional tokenism.

About Karne Kunst

Karne Kunst is a Berlin-based cultural platform and production structure that develops exhibitions, residencies, and public programs focused on contemporary artistic practices shaped by migration, feminism, and transnational perspectives. Karne works across curatorial, educational, and production formats, supporting artists and cultural workers through long-term processes, collaboration, and international networks.

📍 Bardo Projektraum
Jessnerstraße 33, 10247 Berlin

🕒 Opening hours: Wed – Sat, 14:00–18:00
🎟 Free entry · Some activities donation-based