By Mateo Sancho Cardiel
Photograph by Landon Speers
Edo Costantini jokes that the person who caused him to marry fellow artist Delfina Braun was a Golden Bear. It was 2007 and they were both at the Berlinale presenting the film that he had produced and in which she had collaborated. “We went to Berlin because we had a film in competition that won the biggest prize, so it was like impossible for us not to get married,” she says, like a fairy tale. Delfina corrects him with affection, achieving with a look that adheres to reality. “Well, we fell in love right away. But we were in Brazil filming in the favelas, which was a pretty strong experience. “That was our first trip together,” he clarifies. The film in question was Tropa de Elite, by José Padilha, and it was a great international success of Brazilian cinema, but also a great personal achievement for Edo, who sought to emancipate himself from the shadow of his father, Eduardo Costantini, owner of one of the great fortunes in Argentina and one of the best collections of contemporary art in Latin America and founder of the Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires (MALBA), of which Edo became director for years.
eventeen years later, Edo (Buenos Aires, 1976) and Delfina (Buenos Aires, 1986) are still united by a most productive marriage artistically and personally. They have just successfully closed an exhibition titled Opium whispers at the Praxis gallery in Manhattan, led by Braun, but in which Costantini and the architect Delfina Muniz Barreto have collaborated. An experience that reaffirms them in the conflictive relationship of privilege and meritocracy. “I have worked very hard since I was a child, no one has given me anything. But of course I am very grateful and proud of my father, who, among other things, left a museum to Argentina. Because there are so many businessmen who accumulate and do not give,” says Costantini. In his artistic career – in which he has carried out projects such as the platform and film production company Mubi, the artistic and publishing initiative Kolapse or experimental music albums such as Silencio – he follows as his guiding light the principle of contributing to a better world. “Wake up and heal,” he summarizes.
