18/09/2022

Abstract
The practice of enforced disappearances fundamentally alters memorialisation rituals as relatives do not have a body to localise mourning as is possible with processes of death. Families in the Southern Cone of South America (Chile/Argentina) have sought new ways to remember the dictatorship missing who remain in a liminal space between life and death. As a vehicle to represent public grief, photography became vital; families marched with photographs of their disappeared relatives on placards or pinned to their chests. Studies on the importance of photography and disappearance have come some way in elucidating the photographic medium’s unique role of in representing the disappeared. However, little scholarship has looked at the role of photography and new media in these histories. Charting the use of photographs in Chile and Argentina to represent the disappeared and their families’ grief, this article engages with their suspended mourning drawing on content and visual analysis alongside expert interview data. By analysing two websites that reproduce photographs of the disappeared: www.memoriaviva.com and www.recordatorios.com.ar, the article looks at the use of photography in the digital ecology. Both sites show photography’s continued importance for rituals of remembrance and to demand accountability in the present and for the future. ...more

01/06/2021

La mirada incendiada (The Burning Gaze, 2021), which premiered this month on Chilean film streaming platform PuntoPlay, focuses on a pivotal traumatic event during the Chilean dictatorship. The film attempts to work through recent trauma, yet risks sensationalising a catastrophic event remembered by many Chileans, not least the families of the aggrieved. Sebastián Bustamante – artist, writer, researcher and curator – unpicks some of the controversy around the film and reflects on the difficulties of exploring the dictatorship through cinema. All translations are the author’s own. ...more

10/08/2018

Ernesto Pesce, The Raft of the Medusa Shipwrecked in the Plaza Congreso Fountain, 1983


Pesce’s monumental watercolour The Raft of the Medusa Shipwrecked in the Plaza Congreso Fountain makes clear reference to Théodore Géricault’s (1791-1824) Le Radeau de la Méduse -The Raft of the Medusa (1819). Pesce’s contemporary interpretation of Gericault’s painting belongs to a series Que viva la clase media- Long Live the Middle Class (1981-1984). The series’ title is an acerbic commentary on the Argentine middle classes engrossed by consumerism in the period following the last Argentine dictatorship (1976-1983). The artist describes the series as ‘...a critique of a degree of middle class frivolity content with the downfall of Peronism’. (1) The first post-dictatorship president, Raúl Alfonsín (in office 1983- 1989), belonged to the Radical Civic Union Party whose election marked a significant defeat for Peronism which had dominated the Argentine political landscape during much of the 20th Century. In the period preceding the dictatorship, Juan Domingo Perón had returned from exile in Spain and ruled the country for a year before his death. His wife second wife Isabel Martínez Perón succeeded him as President during a period of significant instability and was removed in the civic-military coup d'etat of 24th March 1976. During Isabel Perón’s presidency she had been granting the military increased power to use excessive force against groups deemed subversive. ...more

01/08/2018

Eduardo Villanes, Autoretrato gloria evaporada, 1994

Autoretrato Gloria evaporada (Evaporated Gloria Self-portrait) belongs to a series of works Eduardo Villanes made from 1994-1995. This black and white photograph shows a male figure (Villanes) holding a cardboard box on his head obscuring his face. The box reads Gloria in a stylised typeface like that common to consumer products. Gloria is a Peruvian brand of evaporated milk sold in many Latin American countries. Villanes has altered the lettering on this particular box to read “gente evoporada” (evaporated people) instead of “leche evaporada” (evaporated milk). The photograph is murky and shows imperfections in the printing process, shadows engulf the figure and the use of flash lighting recalls police ‘mug shot’ photography. This photograph however, resists identifying its subject whose face is almost completely obscured except for tufts of hair emanating from the top of the box. ...more

09/11/2017

Ernesto Pesce’s Paisaje mediático is a lithograph on paper which includes a cityscape, taxonomies of insects and astronomical diagrams. This work belongs to a series Costanera sur (1987-1990) in which Pesce sought inspiration from a nature reserve located in the Puerto Madero district of Buenos Aires on the banks of the Río de la Plata estuary. Puerto Madero served as a port for cargo ships carrying goods into Argentina at the end of the 19th century. It has since been replaced due to the need to house ever larger cargo ships. The original port has now become a popular area for fine dining and cafe culture. The Costanera Sur nature reserve was created on a former landfill shortly after the return to democracy in 1983 following the last Argentine dictatorship (1976-1983). ...more