Something Grows Even in the Desert

Some forms of life turn even the worst adversity and the toughest obstacles into opportunities for growth: exotic plants that bloom in the driest climates, mosses and lichens that adapt to the most inhospitable environments, unusual algae and corals that withstand violent ocean currents. The shapes these creatures take may be strange, yet they always retain the distinctive beauty born of the struggle between their own strengths and the harsh conditions they ultimately overcome.

Something similar sometimes happens in art: some works, rather than representing a pre-existing model or an idea already defined in the mind with greater or lesser accuracy, emerge—as they do in nature—by finding their way through tensions and roughness. Betina Attas’s recent work follows this adaptive, generative logic. The series titled “Persistences” evokes, through its visual language, forms that emerge in conditions hostile to life, and whose appeal lies precisely in the way they seem to draw nourishment from the difficulties they have overcome.

Amid broken-down colors and broken tools, unexpected forms find their way into the paintings of this new series. They seem to have asserted themselves in a space that somehow resisted their unfolding. Silhouettes that appear chilled yet undeniably alive rise, in each painting, above desolate landscapes, rather like the vegetation that grows in the desert against all odds. Attentive contemplation may discover in them the ever-welcome symbol of something that triumphs despite every expectation.

Curatorial text by Florencio Noceti

Solo exhibition “Something Grows Even in the Desert”

Casasur, 2025.