MALLORCA.- The Southern Art Hub presents Un Cubo, a solo exhibition by Maria Candelaria Traverso, to be unveiled at SUMMA Mallorca 2026 and subsequently extended at Pueblo Español.
At a moment marked by renewed scrutiny of global systems of extraction, circulation, and value, Traverso’s work offers a materially precise and conceptually grounded response. Her practice, developed from within the Quebrada de Humahuaca in northern Argentina, engages directly with the infrastructures that shape everyday life, revealing their latent political and symbolic dimensions.
Central to Un Cubo is the plastic sack, a ubiquitous object embedded within global economies of transport, labour, and consumption. Drawn from the artist’s own experience within informal markets, the material is neither incidental nor illustrative. It is the work’s point of departure and its conceptual core. Traverso approaches it not as support, but as a system: a surface that carries the traces of movement, exchange, and accumulation across geographies.
Through processes of cutting, weaving, and reconfiguration, the material is displaced from its utilitarian function and reconstituted as structure. What emerges is not simply a transformation of form, but a shift in perception. The works make visible what is ordinarily overlooked, foregrounding the material conditions that sustain contemporary economies while remaining largely unexamined.
The exhibition unfolds through a controlled progression, moving from the raw state of the material towards increasingly complex configurations. This trajectory is both formal and conceptual, allowing the viewer to encounter the work as a sequence of intensities rather than as a fixed statement. The surface becomes active, charged with tension, resistance, and memory.
The cube operates as the exhibition’s organising principle. As a modular and generative structure, it is placed in dialogue with the Chakana, or Andean cross, a cosmological framework that articulates relationships between different planes of existence. Traverso does not treat this reference as symbolic ornament, but as a structural logic through which the work expands. In doing so, she situates her practice within a continuum of knowledge systems that remain operative in the present.
The presentation extends into larger-scale works incorporating materials sourced in Bolivia, where a more open and intuitive approach emerges. Here, the precision of earlier compositions gives way to a looser engagement with form, allowing the material to assert its own rhythm and internal logic.
A reading table forms part of the exhibition, bringing together texts on materiality, labour, and transformation drawn from the artist’s research. Rather than functioning as contextual support, this element reinforces the exhibition’s position as an open field of inquiry, one that acknowledges the shared conditions through which these systems are experienced.
Presented at SUMMA Mallorca and continuing at Pueblo Español, Un Cubo unfolds as a project in motion, responsive to context and grounded in a sustained engagement with place, material, and history. It reflects The Southern Art Hub’s commitment to practices that resist simplification, and to artists whose work articulates complex relationships between local realities and global structures.
The Southern Art Hub
The Southern Art Hub is a nomadic contemporary art gallery and cultural platform dedicated to artistic practices emerging from the Global South and its diasporas. Founded in 2021, and building on the foundation of The African Art Hub, it operates across geographies, fostering meaningful exchanges between artists, institutions, and collectors.
Its programme is shaped by a commitment to curatorial rigour, long-term engagement, and the responsible circulation of artistic practices. Working with artists whose work is grounded in lived experience and cultural memory, The Southern Art Hub supports presentations that maintain both conceptual integrity and contextual depth.
