SECRETO | María Luisa Portuondo

SECRETO (Secret) is an artist’s book by María P. Vila that arises from the homonymous installation created in 2018.

This project has traveled to 18 countries worldwide and has collected 2,108 secrets, in more than 22 different languages. This book contains a selection of 32 secrets.

SECRETO started when María Luisa’s father dies, receiving all his belongings. Among these was a series of letters that her father had written to a psychiatrist in Chile during his exile in Peru. In the letters, she found a secret that her father kept until the day of her death. In the attempt to understand the reasons that motivated her father to hide this secret, María Luisa decides to open the question collectively through this work. That was how she exposed her father’s secret inside an airmail envelope (which were the envelopes in which her father’s letters arrived during the exile), inviting the audience that if they wanted to read that secret, they should leave their own. As a result, untold secrets will find themselves suddenly revealed.

The SECRETO book contains a selection of 32 secrets that must be revealed by the reader -as a ritual act- by tearing each page. This edition of 300 copies contains a foreword by Natalia Matzner and is printed in silkscreen, inkjet, and risograph.