Silät features in the 59th Carnegie International, the longest-running exhibition of international art in North America organized every four years by the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Titled If the word we, the 59th Carnegie International considers the first-person plural as an open and evolving proposition—one shaped by listening, translation, and transformation—bringing together artistic practices that engage shared experience, circulation, and worlds in transition. Drawing from a commissioned catalogue essay by writer Haytham el-Wardany, the exhibition approaches “we” not as a unified subject but as a complex and porous position, attentive to contradiction and change. Across a wide range of media, from painting, photography, and sculpture, to installation, video, performance, and theater, participating artists traverse cultural, political, intellectual, and spiritual geographies that extend beyond national boundaries. The projects emerge through everyday acts, materials, and environments, offering spatially expansive portraits of collective life in the present.
Silät (founded 2023; based in northern Salta, Argentina) is a collective of women from the Wichí people led by Claudia Alarcón and curator Andrei Fernández, who has been working in Wichí territory since 2015. The collective brings together a hundred weavers and artists from communities in Santa Victoria Este, a municipality where the borders of Argentina, Bolivia, and Paraguay meet and blur. Silät can be translated from Wichí as “announcement.” Since 2017, Fernández has been encouraging the organization of groups to work at the intersection of art, social economy, and education. Since 2019, she has produced and curated exhibitions internationally to present the weavings of the Thañí collective and those of Silät. The collective designs activities to encourage listening and experimentation with the weavers. With Indigenous educators, the collective also researches the philosophy of the Wichí people. Silät is part of the Unión Textiles Semillas, an organization of weavers, artists, and activists from northwestern Argentina dedicated to organizing traveling meetings and schools, where causes and memories present in the act of weaving are discussed. Silät exhibits its work in art galleries, museums, and biennials. Their textile works are part of public and private collections in various parts of the world.
If the word we
59th Carnegie International
Organized by Ryan Inouye, Danielle A. Jackson, and Liz Park
The Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh, PA
2 May 2026 - 3 January 2027
