Fernanda Laguna y Roberto Jacoby
Donations, 2010

We act in relation to two spaces: The Ernesto de la Cárcova Museum of Copies and Replicas, a dependency of the National University Institute of Art (the only official university art institution in Buenos Aires), located on the city’s South Promenade; and a cultural center in Villa Fiorito, one of the most famous, populous suburbs in Greater Buenos Aires, since [soccer star Diego] Maradona was born there.

We successfully proposed our project to Professor Carlos Molina, the director for the Museum of Copies, which consisted of:

a) Creating a Museum of Copies and Replicas in Villa Fiorito, at a venue located in a high traffic area at the entrance to the Villa.

b) The Fiorito Museum will show copies produced by the Ernesto de la Cárcova Museum of Copies.

c) At the entrance to the Fiorito Museum, a replica of the left foot from Michelangelo’s David was mounted on a pedestal constructed by a group of local residents.

d) At the same time, the Museum of Copies accepted into its holdings a donation from us. This is a replica of Marcel Duchamp’s piece Feuille de vigne femelle (1954), which, as is well-known, is a mold of a vagina. That is, we donated the replica of the Duchamp piece to the Museum of Copies so that it would be displayed as part of the collection. This would be the first piece of modern art to become a part of the Museum of Copies, which, considering the destruction of Argentine art from the 1960s and other periods, could also become the recipient of new replicas.

e) On November 29, 2009 an action was carried out in the Ernesto de la Cárcova Museum of Copies, during which the donations were given over to the residents of Fiorito and to the authorities of the Ernesto de la Cárcova Museum of Copies.

f) The director of the Cárcova Museum of Copies signed an agreement for these donations with F. Laguna and R. Jacoby.

What we proposed with this project “Donations” was to play with the notion of “museum” and its possible extension ad infinitum.

According to Didi-Huberman, in reference to the technical reproducibility of the work of art, Feuille de vigne femelle is a still more relevant reference than the celebrated text of Walter Benjamin and not simply with the respect to twentieth century art, but also to the problem of the work of art in general. The author radically asks whether it is still possible to exhibit and contemplate Feuille de vigne femelle, and responds in the negative:

“Whether implicit or explicit, the reduction of Duchamp’s work to an idea—a term that legislates, a conceptual “intention”— excuses us from the obligation to look at it.” Further still, he maintains that “there is nothing to see, in terms of the work of art, because there is nothing more than a trace—the non-work par excellence.”

Thus, affirms Didi-Huberman, Feuille de vigne femelle—an object-trace of the female reproductive apparatus, a mold-object of the human mold, an object produced from a mold—is excluded not only from the gaze, but also, according to contemporary legislation, from the benefit of copyright1. We may conclude therefore that it becomes an object of public property, excluded from commodity fetishism. The question that remains is whether these qualities deprive it of its fetish character, or whether they constitute it as such, in the form of a “black hole.”