Pueden dejar lo que quieran

A room full of used clothing. Masses of jackets, trousers, skirts and coats cover the floor, rows of seats and walls, their corporeality bearing witness to the wearers who are no longer present. Who wore them and what has happened to them? These are questions that are particularly urgent in Argentina’s post-dictatorial society. The small notes pinned on the clothes narrate stories from former lives: a child’s dress tells of a father’s return to Buenos Aires in 1983. A cardigan is reminiscent of the laugh the person had who wore it. This textile memory box becomes the stage setting for the story of how a man lost his family in a car accident. To keep his memories alive, he writes on their clothes. Seven actors tell his stories; either together, or separately, by pulling the curtains – made of clothing – around them to create intimate spaces, in which the garments seem to be listening. In “Pueden dejar lo que quieran”, the visual artist and theatre-maker Fernando Rubio tries to provide physical access to historical and private moments using the objects left behind by those missing, reconstructing memory using clothes and their stories.