El Rey Blanco
Argentina/Italy
2026
The El Rey Blanco [The White King] project takes its title from a South American colonial legend according to which, by traveling up a great river, one could reach the kingdom of a monarch reigning from a mountain of silver. This myth, fueled by Bolivia’s Cerro Rico de Potosí — one of the most heavily mined silver mines in history — sparked an extractivist frenzy that
literally drained the territory of its silver resources under Spanish rule. Five centuries later, a new rush is underway with the “lithium triangle,” an area between Bolivia, Argentina, and Chile that contains more than 65% of the world’s reserves of this highly strategic white metal. Through this series, Maximiliano Tineo investigates and reconstructs the postcolonial traces left by this Rey Blanco, questioning how this myth still shapes landscapes and memories.
Portfolio
About the artist
Maximiliano Tineo, born in 1988 in Rosario, Argentina, is a visual artist based in Paris. Trained as a photographer, he also uses other forms of expression, such as video, sound installation, and, more recently, sculpture to explore subjects often related to his connection with his country of origin