LUMINARIES
ART IN THE FAMILY A new generation of Latin American collectors, gallerists, and curators carries on and broadens the work of their parents.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY AXEL STEIN (FAJARDO-HILL); COURTESY OF THE ARTIST, © REGINA SILVEIRA (BISCOITO ARTE).
by Margery Gordon
EVERY COLLECTION OF ART BEGINS WITH A SINGLE SELECTION, and Eileen Vergez made her first choice at age 5, when her parents, Juan Vergez and Patricia Pearson-Vergez, allowed their children to each pick a work from a 1994 exhibition of emerging artists at Ruth Benzacar Galería de Arte in Buenos Aires. Eileen adopted a silicone piglet slung from the ceiling, as if a stork had delivered the debut of Nicola Costantino, the daughter of a surgeon and fashion designer, whose Peletería Humana (Human Furriery), made from synthetic skin, took off on a world tour a few years later. She went on to embody Eva Perón in video installations (documented in the new film The Artefacta) for Argentina’s pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2013, the same year Eileen completed her architecture degree.
Eileen took private lessons with Costantino at 13, but her instincts as an art advisor surfaced the next year in Switzerland on the Vergezes’ scouting trip to Art Basel 2003. “I have two problems,” Eileen recalls reporting back to her parents. “I chose two pieces, and the budget isn’t enough.” Both won her parents’ approval, however, as well as pride of place at their private museum in Buenos Aires. Visitors to Tacuarí, named for the former ink factory’s street, pass through a succession of doors by Polish sculptor Monika Sosnowska and wind up at a wall strung with ribbons that Rivane Neuenschwander stamped with wishes, exchanging scribbled desires for impressions from prior participants in the Brazilian’s signature piece.
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