This exhibition of works by Fernanda Laguna is dedicated to her production during the initial and most influential years of Belleza y Felicidad, 2000 and 2001. A comprehensive group of works from that radical period in her production is presented for the first time since they were made 23 years ago. It coincides with the release of a publication devoted to these works from the early years of this century, a time of legendary economic and social crisis in Argentina, which resonates with its present.
In 1999 Laguna co-founded Belleza y Felicidad (Beauty and Happiness), together with poet Cecilia Pavón. A combination of gift shop, art gallery, artisanal publishing house, space for encounters and parties, Belleza y Felicidad was a milestone in the development of Argentina’s contemporary art scene. Equally rule-breaking and influential was Laguna’s approach to her artistic practice at that time, creating a visual language based on simple, precarious materials and techniques, coupled with an urgency and spontaneous impulse of great emotional intensity, often incorporating the use of colloquial language. With these works, Laguna inaugurated a certain ethics and aesthetics that demand from the viewer a symmetrically open and radically sensitive approach and that continues to be influential in the production of younger generations of Argentine artists. Her works from this period engage in a de-materialization that does not come from conceptual strategies but from the affective.
In 2003 Laguna opened a branch of Belleza y Felicidad in the marginalized shantytown of Villa Fiorito where she continues to offer art workshops for the local youth. It has also become a center for feminist activism against gender violence through artistic projects.
Described by international curators and art historians as one of the most influential artists of her generation in Argentina, Laguna has a multidisciplinary practice that focuses on the visual arts but includes literature —she has published several poetry books as well as novels—, the creation of a series of alternative spaces and carries on an effective social practice.

She has had numerous solo shows, including exhibitions at The Drawing Center, New York and the Institute for Contemporary Art, VCU, Virginia. She has participated in group shows and international biennials, among them Mercosul Biennial, Brazil; Cuenca Biennial, Ecuador; Site Santa Fe, USA; A Universal History of Infamy, LACMA. Her works are in the collections of MALBA, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York; Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico; Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; CA2M, Madrid; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others.