Überlebende #1: Maria Antonia Deolinda y Correa

C-Print

2008

Women who followed their husbands to death are the protagonists of the ongoing project “Überlebende” (Survivors).

Even now, Maria Antonia Deolinda y Correa occupies a special place in Argentinian popular belief, and is adored as the ideal image of a faithful wife and self-sacrificing mother. In 1841, she is said to have set out west in search of her husband, who had been forcibly recruited during the Argentine Civil Wars, and died of thirst along the way. Her newborn child survived, however, thanks to her miraculously abundant supply of breastmilk. In Cibulka’s photographs, she too survives as the venerated Difunta Correa. Well prepared, she looks to an uncertain future that is filled with challenges to be overcome.

What the artist is offering us here is an emancipatory look at seemingly hopeless situations. In Cibulka’s re-written legends, the heroines can go down in history without having to die first.