An ancient 16th-century Spanish colonial legend originating in South America —“The White King and the Silver Mountain”—promised that by traveling upriver along a great river in the southern part of the continent, one would reach the realm of a monarch reigning from a mountain made entirely of silver.

This story marked the beginning of a race to exhaust the continent’s resources for the benefit of foreign interests. Yesterday, the river was none other than the Río de la Plata, in present-day Argentina, and the legendary mountain, Mount Potosí, now in Bolivia: a triangular mound rising to over 4,500 meters in altitude, known for having been one of the most significant silver deposits in history, depleted during the Spanish occupation of the region.

Today, 500 years later, this same race to exploit resources continues in another triangular form: the Lithium Triangle, bounded by Bolivia, Argentina, and Chile, an area that holds more than 65% of the world’s lithium reserves—a metal essential for manufacturing rechargeable batteries, often called "the new oil" but also "white gold".

Through a documentary approach infused with a strong dreamlike quality, and using photography, sculpture, and archival materials, artist Maximiliano Tineo draws a parallel between these two triangular forms and examines the persistence of extractivist practices, as well as their human, economic, and environmental consequences, by exploring how this narrative continues to shape memory and territories.