“El Norte que Habita”: The Argentine Creator Bringing Northern Culture Into Global Conversation
Visual creator Samia Linares presents a collaborative exhibition uniting artists from northern Argentina through photography and illustration.
For decades, much of Argentina’s cultural production centered in Buenos Aires, often leaving other regions underrepresented. In response, Argentine visual creator Samia Linares, originally from Tucumán, Mexico, is leading El Norte que Habita, a collective art project that seeks to bring the cultural identity of northern Argentina into broader international contexts. The SW Newsmagazine spoke to the artist about the exhibition and its cultural importance.
“This project is also a way of questioning how cultural narratives are built,” Linares tells SW Newsmagazine.
The exhibition unites photographers and illustrators from Tucumán, Salta, and Catamarca, fostering collaborative works that reinterpret documentary photography through graphic intervention. The result blends realism and imagination, offering new perspectives on landscapes, architecture, and everyday life in the region.
“For a long time, the visual identity of Argentina has been told from a very centralized perspective,” Linares says. “El Norte que Habita is an attempt to open that narrative and allow other voices, territories, and aesthetics to exist within it.”
More than an exhibition, the project serves as a platform to highlight artistic voices from outside Argentina’s traditional cultural centers and to expand conversations around representation and visibility.
“The north has a distinct identity, but it doesn’t always reach broader audiences,” Linares explains. “This project is about creating a bridge—allowing those perspectives to travel and connect with new people.”
Building a Collective Visual Language
Born in Tucumán, she graduated in Communication (UNSTA), Photography (UNT Faculty of Arts), and Marketing (ESPM, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil). Linares has built a career at the intersection of photography, visual storytelling, and cultural production, collaborating with artists, musicians, and creative spaces.
Her work has been exhibited internationally, including in Santander, Spain, and in New York at Saint Lydia’s, where she explored themes of memory, territory, and visual narrative.
Throughout her practice, Linares approaches image-making as a tool for cultural connection—using photography not only to document but also to create dialogue between places and audiences.
“I’m interested in the space between what is documented and what is imagined,” she says. “When another artist intervenes in an image, it stops belonging to a single perspective. It becomes something shared—something that reflects how identity is always constructed collectively.”
In El Norte que Habita, she takes on the role of curator and producer, bringing together artists from across northern Argentina to build a project that reflects the region’s cultural diversity.
Exhibition Details
The exhibition will be presented at the Random Gallery in Tulum, Mexico, from May 8 through May 20, introducing audiences to a contemporary visual interpretation of Argentina’s northwest.
“The goal is for these stories to move, to occupy space, and to become part of a wider cultural conversation,” Linares says about the upcoming exhibition.
Linares hopes you join her in the conversation.
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