Ainelén Bertotti Burket

My pieces originate from dreamlike images and the observation of tasks I perform in daily life. Trades related to construction (masonry, carpentry, blacksmithing, etc.) represent an empirical knowledge that runs through my family heritage and shapes my artistic practice. I view these acquired skills as practices that repeat yet are never identical, finding their uniqueness in that variation.
I work from an idea I imagine freely, without initially considering its technical resolution. I don’t create sketches; instead, I trust in what I envision, allowing space for a process that is permeable, accidental, and simultaneously one of transformation and destruction—elements inherent and faithful to my personal exploration.
My work embodies a relationship between my body, the embodied craft, the materials used, and the passage of time. The mark of the human hand is, in the end, the connection between the body and the materials, a trace left imprinted on the work.
I am particularly interested in working with noble materials like wood, stone, and metal—elements fundamental to construction throughout history. These materials are silent witnesses and participants, embodying millions of years of stillness and history. They carry the passage of time and its energy, often regarded as inert resources by humanity.
I carry out processes where the matter transforms into something else through the use of tools, while still retaining its temporal potency and natural origin. The pieces are defined by their materials, as if engaging in alchemical processes that amplify their voices, scents, and textures, emphasizing the inherent qualities of the materials used.
When working with objects, I am drawn to the formal synthesis that arises from the relationship between the piece and its surrounding space. I think of them as installations that are part of a space and a time that define, modify, and magnetize them. A time that precedes, permeates, and remains in the artwork. I am intrigued by the power of synthesis in my works—the objectual result of an intimate and immersive process of observation and labor. A static object that invites movement or potential actions hidden behind my works.
I aim for any viewer to confront the piece through its material honesty, entering an open field of meanings—a nonverbal dialogue with the work as an open possibility to engage with it as they wish.
In my practice, art is defined as a sincere approach to a question, not a certainty or a singular truth. This open question is answered by the materialities being explored and the final work. There are multiple possibilities and directions, and the piece is merely an approximation to all those imagined possibilities, to other potential worlds.
I think of art as the naive ability to observe and imagine something that does not yet exist and the possibility of creating something without knowing where it will lead. Art as a strategy of play, which can later be named as art.