In 1914, as Europe launched itself into the Great War, Uruguay was attempting to build a modernization project grounded in Enlightenment values. A “dream of reason,” though at times filled with monsters—or, in any case, a dream only partially fulfilled. If modernity is a time without gods or destiny, a void in history that challenges and demands people to construct their own present and future, then the history of modernization in Uruguay can be read in its most heroic light through a series of projects that, in one way or another, sought to make those same desires for freedom a reality.
At the center of this whirlwind called modernity—this wind capable of breaking the wings of the “angel of history”—architects played a leading role: they held positions of power in government, flooded public administration with proposals, and engaged deeply with the mechanisms of the liberal economy. But above all, they projected—through every trace and line—the shapes and relationships of a new world to be built under the protection of Reason, Ethics, and Sensibility.
The Happy Village invites us to examine one hundred years of modernization in Uruguay through twenty episodes that, in one way or another, reveal the deepest ambitions of the modern dream—and also its nightmares.
The curatorial work can be summarized in two operations: the first, the construction of a historical-critical hypothesis and its development through the set of episodes that shape the catalogue. The second, the installation of an exhibition capable of offering the visitor an experience—a here and now—aligned with that same vision.
The exhibition is conceived as a kind of archive unfolded within the space of the pavilion: an accumulation of materials ranging from unmediated documents—blueprints, models, drawings—to historiographical interpretations. A repository of documents that invites the new “flâneurs” of the globalized age to wander through a century of everyday history.
Commissioner: Daniela Freiberg
Curators: Martín Craciun, Jorge Gambini, Santiago Medero, Mary Méndez, Emilio Nisivoccia (lead), and Jorge Nudelman
Collaborators: Laura Nozar, Martín Cajade, Oficina 206u (María Camila Castellano, Jimena Germil, María Victoria López, Ana Rodriguez Serpa), Jmac Garín (José Ramón García Inchorbe), LabFab MVD (Marcelo Payssé, Paulo Pereyra, Lucia Meirelles, Juan Pablo Portillo), Carolina Giraldi, Mariana Díaz
Photos: Nico Saieh