Writing
Argentina 1976-2016: Activism, Memorialisation & Complicity
Argentina 1976-2016: Activism, Memorialisation & Complicity Curatorial Text
To fit history into discreet moments is a difficult task. History conceived of in linear fashion can be as detrimental as it is useful for those wishing to understand the past. A preface is needed to understand the rationale behind choosing a time period between 1976-2016 for this week of events and temporary exhibition at ESCALA’s new Teaching and Research Space using the collection’s holdings of art from Argentina. This year coincides with the forty years since the last military coup d’état in Argentina on 24th March 1976. This moment was followed by a period of intense repression during what the military junta termed the Proceso de reorganización nacional (National Reorganisation Process). The repression had started before this moment in different parts of the country but it is this date that, since 2006, has been the Día nacional de la memoria por la verdad y justicia (National Day of Memory for Truth and Justice) in Argentina and prior to this date it was an important day for human rights organisations.
To fit history into discreet moments is a difficult task. History conceived of in linear fashion can be as detrimental as it is useful for those wishing to understand the past. A preface is needed to understand the rationale behind choosing a time period between 1976-2016 for this week of events and temporary exhibition at ESCALA’s new Teaching and Research Space using the collection’s holdings of art from Argentina. This year coincides with the forty years since the last military coup d’état in Argentina on 24th March 1976. This moment was followed by a period of intense repression during what the military junta termed the Proceso de reorganización nacional (National Reorganisation Process). The repression had started before this moment in different parts of the country but it is this date that, since 2006, has been the Día nacional de la memoria por la verdad y justicia (National Day of Memory for Truth and Justice) in Argentina and prior to this date it was an important day for human rights organisations.
20/03/2016
Curatorial text written for the exhibition Argentina 1976-2016: Activism, Memorialisation & Complicity, ESCALA, University of Essex, 2016
To fit history into discreet moments is a difficult task. History conceived of in linear fashion can be as detrimental as it is useful for those wishing to understand the past. A preface is needed to understand the rationale behind choosing a time period between 1976-2016 for this week of events and temporary exhibition at ESCALA’s new Teaching and Research Space using the collection’s holdings of art from Argentina. This year coincides with the forty years since the last military coup d’état in Argentina on 24th March 1976. This moment was followed by a period of intense repression during what the military junta termed the Proceso de reorganización nacional (National Reorganisation Process). The repression had started before this moment in different parts of the country but it is this date that, since 2006, has been the Día nacional de la memoria por la verdad y justicia (National Day of Memory for Truth and Justice) in Argentina and prior to this date it was an important day for human rights organisations.
The period following 1976 was one of the bloodiest episodes in recent Argentine history. The military junta, initially led by Jorge Rafael Videla (army), Emilio Eduardo Massera (navy) and Orlando Ramón Agosti (air force) institutionalised a terror campaign against the population of Argentina and those it deemed to be enemies. Leftist groups were seen as an illness which needed eradicating, the regime painted itself as the cure the country needed. Kidnappings were a regular occurrence following the coup and many of those abducted were taken to the hundreds of clandestine detention centres that emerged in the capital and the provinces of Argentina. These spaces were the sight of atrocities including torture, killings and disappearances. Los desaparecidos (the Disappeared) became the term used to describe those who were kidnapped by the regime and whose whereabouts remain unknown. These tactics of enforced disappearance sought to spread fear in the general population and prevent opposition to the Proceso. The number of disappeared is still a figure that is contested with estimates ranging from 20,000-30,000.
Following a period of economic decline and the Argentine defeat at the hands of the better-equipped British Army during the Malvinas/Falkland War in 1982, democracy was once again restored in Argentina. This was not, however, before members of the departing military were able to grant themselves amnesties from prosecution. The first democratically elected post-dictatorship President Raúl Alfonsin (in office 1983-1989) started a process of reconciliation by revoking these amnesties and setting up the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP). The findings of this commission were published in 1984 in the Nunca más (Never Again) report and high ranking military generals were tried in the initial Trials of the Juntas in 1985. Whilst moving towards promoting truth and reconciliation, two laws were also introduced during the Alfonsín presidency which brought limits to justice seeking: La ley de punto final (Full Stop Law, 1986) put a statute of limitations of human rights cases being brought to trial and La ley de obedencia debida (Law of Due Obedience, 1987) prevented low-ranking military personnel from being brought to trial. Those exempted from prosecution were said to be only following orders.
The 20th anniversary of the military coup in 1996 was a period of intensified activity by human rights activists and artists making work which dealt with the period of the dictatorship and its effects. During the government of Carlos Menem (in office 1989-1999) the official government policy became one of turning over a new leaf in history and forgetting the past. Menem used his time in office to give presidential pardons to thirty nine military officers convicted in the initial trials. What work was done towards truth and reconciliation was reversed during Menem’s ‘age of impunity.’ Da Silva Catela has described three periods of memory in the return to democracy, especially relating to the opening of memory spaces in former detention centres in Argentina. The first, the return to of democracy, was when questions of the fate of the disappeared begun to be asked and survivors’ testimonies became public information. Former clandestine detention centres were also brought to the attention of society. The twenty year anniversary (1996) was the second moment when groups and individuals appealed to society to remember when justice in the courts had failed and Menem’s presidential pardons promoted official forgetting. Many of the artists included in this exhibition were active in producing works that directly reflected the atmosphere of this time and the need to promote remembering in Argentina when the government wanted society to forget.
With the election of President Néstor Kirchner (in office 2003-2007) there began a period of ‘State Memory Policies’. In 2003, the Final Stop Law and the Due Obedience Law were repealed. Néstor Kirchner attended the opening of a memory museum in the former detention centre the ESMA (Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada- Navy Mechanics School) in 2004 and in a symbolic act marking the 30 years since the coup in 2006, the 24th March was established as the National Day of Memory and the history of the dictatorship was taught in schools, marking a significant shift in institutional memory discourse. Official support for memory projects continued under the presidency of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (in office 2007-2015).
The forty year since the coup, which will be commemorated on the 24th March 2016, presents a precarious moment for many human rights organisations in Argentina. It is unclear what the recent election of Mauricio Marci (in office since December 2015) means for memory projects in the country and the official support and financing during the period of Kirschnerism looks under threat. Macri has demonstrated a desire to involve himself in the operations of the National Archive of Memory by removing its president Horacio Pietragalla from his position. This move has received a lot of criticism from human rights groups in Argentina and groups such as the Abuelas de la plaza de mayo - Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo (a group of relatives of the disappeared searching to recover grandchildren who were given up for illegal adoptions by the military regime) have drafted statements of their ‘concern’ regarding the new government’s approach to remembering.
The repression presented an extensive challenge for many artists. Many of the artists included in this exhibition were directly affected by the dictatorship and some had relatives and friends who disappeared. The effects of the dictatorship were felt by large sectors of society and, as Cecilia Sosa has articulated, the experience of trauma goes beyond that experienced by blood relatives of victims.
Some of the artists presented here were exiled: Marcelo Brodsky, León Ferrari and Horacio Zabala left Argentina following 1976. Others were outside of Argentina at the time of the coup: Marisa Rueda and Remo Bianchedi had to try and understand what was happening in their native Argentina from abroad. Some artists formed part of a generation working after the return to democracy who attempted to communicate, through their practice, what could not be said during the dictatorship. The 1990s were a time of grassroots activism on the streets of Argentina. Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo (Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo) had been holding weekly marches in Buenos Aires’s most central plaza demanding the return of their disappeared relatives. These marches were held in the face of repression during the dictatorship. Alongside the Madres, other groups such as H.I.J.O.S also emerged in the 1990s promoting a form of justice in the streets through Escraches. Art and activism shared common ground in collective actions such as the El Siluetazo in 1983. The aim of this action was to give a visual representation to the thousands of disappeared in Argentina by putting cut out silhouettes of the disappeared in public places such as the Plaza de Mayo and outside former detention centres. These actions made the disappeared visible and made the past a reality that could not be ignored. ESCALA’s holdings of Argentine art have many examples of artists deeply concerned with actively remembering and presenting a challenge to the silence which prevailed during the dictatorship and which threatened the newly restored democracy.
Fernando Traverso’s stencilled bicycles were the artist’s way of using the streets of his hometown of Rosario as the setting to remember his disappeared friends. The work of the art collective Grupo Escombros captures some of the energy surrounding art in the streets which made bold statements targeting injustices in Argentina. One of Grupo Escombros’ activist/artistic statements was to plaster posters on the streets of La Plata during the 20th Anniversary of the coup in 1996. Marcelo Brodsky, in that same moment, was part of a series of commemorative acts at his school in Buenos Aires to remember those who disappeared or were killed. As part of these commemorations Brodsky showed his inscribed class photograph to new generations of students at the school so they could understand and experience the past. This photograph is now permanently displayed at Brodsky’s high school. León Ferrari also showed his series of Nunca más collages in 1996 in the book XX años (Twenty Years) which included works by 360 artists. Grupo Escombros’ El hombre roto (the broken man) was also included in this book and accompanying exhibition staged to mark the twenty years since the last military coup. Ferrari’s series of collages had previously been published the year before in left-wing newspaper Pagina 12 alongside the re-publication of the 1984 CONADEP Nunca más report.
Newspapers and language were the theme of Horacio Zabala’s indecipherable mock newspapers that he begun to produce in the 1980s and 1990s, perhaps reflecting the censorship of the dictatorship and the role of the media in transmitting truth in society after the dictatorship. The generation of artists in the 1980s and 1990s depicted the violence of the 1970s in their art. Ana Eckell painted sinister characters that evoke military generals or in some instances the tortured bodies of people. Monstrous ecclesiastical figures were Luis Scafati’s way of condemning the role of the Church during the dictatorship and the period following the return to democracy. Hector Giuffré chose the year of the return to democracy (1983) to attempt to depict the absence left by the country’s thousands of disappeared, referencing Dutch Golden Age paintings to transmit this message. What is more, the body became a prominent theme in art made after 1976 and Pablo Suaréz’s and Andrés Waissman’s works are two example of the way that the human form became an expression of the lasting effects of the dictatorship on Argentine society.
Remo Bianchedi, La nostalgia de Antonio S. (Antonio S.’s Nostalgia, 1976)
Bianchedi painted La nostalgia de Antonio S. in 1976 in Kassel Germany during a period of study. This work was made in the same moment that the military junta was kidnapping, torturing and killing Argentines. Bianchedi’s work makes reference to Argentine traditions. Drinking Mate tea is a practice that has come to define countries like Argentina and neighbouring Uruguay. As Bianchedi states in his artist statement for ESCALA, Mate is ‘a national symbol. ’ The bombilla (straw) and mate (gourd) become signs which signify Argentine culture. Perhaps the nostalgia that Bianchedi describes is for those he left behind in Argentina, those identified by their common practice of drinking Mate. The figure in the picture is contorted, or as Bianchedi puts it ‘mutilated’ and ‘reassembled’ beyond recognition. This could allude to the news of the repression and torture of bodies in Argentina in 1976 that was becoming international news. Bianchedi’s work is hard to decipher, but he has indicated the importance of the moment in which the work was made and the subsequent disappearance of thousands during and after 1976. The work to some extent anticipates the repression, as Bianchedi puts it: ‘Art illustrates History, too.’
Marcelo Brodsky, 1er año, 6ta division, 1967 (1st year, 6th division, 1967, 1996) and Puente de la memoria (Memory Bridge, 1996)
Brodsky’s class photograph is a work that has been exhibited on a number of occasions and has been used to teach on human rights at the University of Essex. The artist was exiled during the dictatorship and his brother Fernando was one of those who disappeared from the clandestine detention centre the ESMA. After the return to democracy, Brodsky tried to ‘work on [his] identity,’ to find out what had happened to his former classmates. The result of this encounter led Brodsky to enlarge his class photograph from 1967 and inscribed on its surface (with crayons) short phrases explaining what had happened to each of his classmates since the photograph was taken. The accounts narrate occurrences that anyone might identify with, a classmate who now ‘lives in Vienna’, another ‘is a dentist’. Two classmates’ inscriptions however, tell of histories intimately connected with the history of the dictatorship. Claudio, we learn, ‘was killed in a confrontation’ and Martín, Brodsky’s closest friend, was ‘one of the first they [the military] took.’ Brodsky’s inscribed class photo was first shown in his school as part of commemorations marking the 20 years since the military coup. Puente de la memoria (Memory Bridge) aimed to get the new generation of students at Brodsky’s school to understand and remember what had happened to the school’s former students during the dictatorship. Brodsky produced a video work with Rosario Suarez which showed part of this act of remembrance which can be seen in ESCALA’s archive and in the ESCALA Teaching and Research space in this temporary exhibition.
Ana Eckell, Untitled, (1985)
Eckell’s work is from a series she made just after the end of the dictatorship. These works sit between abstraction and figuration and often depict sinister figures in seemingly violent and disturbing poses. This work Untitled (1985) shows two male figures in a violent exchange. The figure on the right wears glasses and what appear to be military boots, his body is contorted as if turning his back on the other figure, that of a bald man to the left of him. He seems to be spitting into the mouth of the other figure. This work was made in 1985, the year of the initial trials against the military juntas. Although Eckell’s characters are often fictional ones, the man on the right starts to take on the likeness of General Videla the former dictator of Argentina. Eckell has said that ‘[t]he dictatorship was the episode that most marked me in my life […] In that moment they kidnapped and they killed people and one couldn’t help or change anything[…] I think if I hadn’t made those works I would have gone crazy.’ Eckell’s portrayal of violence is clearly a way of dealing with Argentina’s past. The 1980s was the moment when many artists finally felt able to express themselves after the prevalent censorship during the dictatorship.
Grupo Escombros, Mar (Sea) and archival objects, (1993)
Grupo Escombros’s Mar is one of the collective’s ‘objetos de conciencia’ (‘objects of conscience’). The collective, formed in 1988 in La Plata, drew together strands of political activism with art. The group called itself ‘artistas de lo que queda’ (artists of what remains) and the word ‘escombros’ means ‘rubble’ or ‘debris’ in English evoking a sense of a group of artists emerging from the rubble left from the years of violence in Argentina. Grupo Escombros was active in the post-dictatorship period challenging injustice and inequality as well as bringing environmental issues to the fore. Mar was a work first produced in August 1993 which comprised of 500 black refuse bags placed outside and on the first floor of the Museum of Modern Art in Buenos Aires. The definition of the word corruption was printed on each of these bags. The object in ESCALA’s holdings is one of these bags that the group distributed alongside the intervention at the museum. Inside the box is a black plastic refuse sack with the words ‘Arroje aqui todo lo que corrompe’ (throw away all that corrupts in here), the group are inviting the object’s beholding to participate in demanding an end to corruption. Grupo Escombros was responding to the reality of Argentina in the 1990s which was rife with corruption and hyperinflation. This period was one of intense activism on the city streets of Argentina during the period of Menemismo. In 1996 on the 20th year anniversary of the military coup, Grupo Escombros took to the streets with a poster titled 1976 24 de marzo 1996. 500 of these posters were put up in the city of La Plata and 600 were distributed. This work was also published in the newspaper El día de La Plata. The archival material shown here refers to some of these commemorative acts and a reproduction of the poster, 1976 24 de marzo 1996, can be seen in some of these archival holdings.
León Ferrari, Nunca más, (Never Again, 1995)
León Ferrari’s Nunca más illustrations were published in the left-wing newspaper Pagina 12 in 1995 alongside the re-publication in weekly instalments of the 1984 Nunca más report. This series of collages draws on newspaper clippings the artist had compiled during the dictatorship which described the discovery of bodies on the shores of Argentina and Uruguay. Some of these clippings form part of another series called Nosotros no sabíamos (We Didn’t Know, 1976-1992) where Ferrari collected news stories printed at the height of the repression. In the Nunca más series Ferrari juxtaposes these clippings with images of military generals, catholic priests, depictions of Adolf Hitler and historic paintings including Hans Memling’s The Last Judgement (1467-1471). This series, which was originally shown at the Art Exchange-University of Essex in 2006, captures events from the dictatorship and post–dictatorship period and draws parallels with world history and iconography. Memling’s Hell is compared to the junta’s Argentina: the ESMA clandestine detention centre is surrounded by the tortured souls in Memling’s triptych. According to testimonies, the ESMA was the last known place where León Ferrari’s son, Ariel, was taken after he was fatally injured by military forces. One of those complicit in Ariel’s abduction and death was Alfredo Astiz a navy commander known as the “Blond Angel of Death.” Ferrari depicts Astiz in another of his collages; behind Astiz is a cutting of Leonardo da Vinci’s skull, View of a skull (1489). Astiz is uniformed, the photograph was taken whilst Astiz was being tried in 1984 in the Trials of the Juntas, da Vinci’s skull looms in the background as if judging Astiz for the many deaths for which he was responsible.
The testimonies of those held in clandestine detention centres came to the public’s attention in the 1984 CONADEP truth commission and Nunca más report. Some of the collages reproduce these testimonies, one reads “Cuando nos golpeban nos decían. Somos la Gestapo” (“When they hit us they told us. We are the Gestapo”). Feitlowitz has drawn parallels between the Argentine military generals’ construction of their enemy as dirty and in need of cleaning to similar practices in Nazi Germany; Ferrari is keen to highlight these resemblances. The collages also seek to attack the complicity of the Church in human rights abuses and in preventing truth-seeking in democratic Argentina. Ferrari reproduces images of priests and cardinals meeting with generals who appear to be blessing the generals’ actions. This series drew criticism from the military in the 1990s that was unhappy with the parallels Ferrari drew with Nazi Germany. The Casa rosada (Pink House), the presidential palace in Buenos Aires, is depicted in another of these collages. In condemnation of General Videla’s period of rule, the Pink House consumes Videla and in turn, the larger figure of Adolf Hitler devours the presidential palace. The statement is a damning attack on the military regime which Ferrari compares to National Socialism in Germany.
Hector Giuffré, Naturaleza muerta, (Still Life, 1983)
This edition is of a painting Giuffré made in 1983, the year democracy was restored in Argentina. In this moment, artists produced work that dealt with the realities of the dictatorship. The effects of years of censorship and limits on artistic expression meant that even in 1983 fear was still present in society. This still life has obvious links to Joannes Vermeer’s De Melkmeid (The Milkmaid, 1657-1658) but coded in this depiction is a reference to the thousands of disappeared people in Argentina. The jug used by the milkmaid in the original Vermeer painting is on the table, but missing from the painting is the milkmaid herself. This absence underlies that of a generation of Argentines who were killed, disappeared or exiled from the country because of the repression. When asked about this work, the artist has described the significance of the fish laid out on the table. Giuffré has discussed the series of still lives he painted of violence against animals as ‘visual metaphors that allowed me to relate my compositions to the violence of current reality: the criminality through which Argentina passed during the period of military dictatorship.’ He describes the Dorado fish, a species which has been overfished to the point of extinction in Argentina, as a metaphor for enforced disappearances in Argentina during the dictatorship. With the passing of time, and since the knowledge of death flights (where the disappeared were thrown from planes into the sea) in Argentina, the Dorado on the table takes on extended symbolic meaning when representing the country’s disappeared..
Marisa Rueda, … y después se erigen monumentos, (… and afterwards they erect monuments, 1976)
At the time of the military coup Marisa Rueda was in England. It was in London that Rueda heard reports of the atrocities being committed her native Argentina. The artist produced the sculpture y después se erigen monumentos in response to the situation in Argentina as she attempted to bring to light the realities of torture in Argentina to international audiences. This work was shown at an exhibition organised by Amnesty International in London to highlight human rights abuses in Argentina. When choosing a title for the work Rueda states, ‘I thought the day would come when monuments to these victims would be erected. Even [when] those democratic governments worldwide that did not want to consider the military in Argentina to have been dictators [sic]. Those that were turning a blind eye, or even selling arms to them; they would pay for these monuments…’ Rueda’s sculpture is prophetic as, since the period of State Memory Policies from 2006, many monuments have been erected in former detention centres.
Rueda has discussed the influence of artists such as Francis Bacon on her practice and this work evokes the similarly tortured bodies present in some of Bacon’s paintings. This torso, stretched over a wooden frame, brings to mind the many clandestine torture sites that were in operation in Argentina during the dictatorship. This twisted, contorted figure becomes representative of the Argentine civil society which bore the horrors of the period of dictatorship. The private suffering of those held in captivity is brought to the attention of the public through Rueda’s sculptural monument.
Marisa Rueda, Ellos también rezan, (They also pray, undated)
Rueda’s Ellos también rezan is an explicit condemnation of the role of the Catholic Church in atrocities committed during the dictatorship. In 1995 the confession of retired Navy Captain Adolfo Scilingo brought the knowledge of death flights to the public’s attention. Scilingo confessed to having been involved in throwing heavily drugged prisoners from airplanes into the sea. Scilingo’s superiors stated that “ecclesiastic authorities had assured [them] that this was a Christian, basically nonviolent form of death”. Rueda’s sculpture depicts a praying general being absolved for his crimes. Her title: They also Pray suggests the generals believed they were fighting a moral, Christian crusade against subversion. Of this work Rueda asks ‘how can a person in charge of torture, disappearance and killing pray? What does he feel so righteous about? And why? Is he asking for help in his ‘job’ [sic]’ It is the complicity of the Catholic Church Rueda choses to denounce and all those priests who blessed the nefarious practices of the military regime.
Luis Scafati, Untitled, (1984)
Luis Scafati is an important illustrator of books and newspapers in Argentina, having illustrated editions of Kafka’s Metamorphosis (1915) published in its centenary (2015)as well as his version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), which was published in the UK by Bloody Books in 2008. Using Chinese ink, Scafati has covered many political themes in his work including corruption, the role of the Church in society and the dictatorship which is a theme he has returned to on a number of occasions. In 1976, Scafati was studying drawing at the University of Cuyo when, following the coup, Scafati was expelled from the faculty. The artist continued to publish under the pseudonym ‘Fati’ in popular newspapers in Argentina and abroad. ESCALA’s two works by Scafati were done following the return to democracy in Argentina.
The drawing Untitled (1984) by Luis Scafati represents an anonymous crowd of male silhouettes on in the lower-half of the frame. A bigger, taller figure stands in the foreground of the image. The figure is a handcuffed jester pulled by a rope or chains whilst the faceless crowd goes on with their daily life. The artwork, which was made just one year after the Argentine dictatorship came to an end, may allegorically refer to the political transition towards democracy. The jester possibly recalls his symbolic role of being the only character in the royal court allowed to mock others, even the sovereign. The jester to some extent had the privilege of being able to speak the truth veiled in jokes. In Scafati’s drawing the jester looks melancholic, the handcuffs represent his inability to continue to speak the truth. Even after the return to democracy, the past was not confronted by all of society, here represented as the faceless masses. Humour, a key feature of many of Scafati’s illustrations, and an attribute of the jester, is missing in this work.
Luis Scafati, Untitled (1986)
Scafati’s second work depicts a monstrous bishop rubbing his hands together while bile flows from his mouth. A group of three people stand beside the bishop, one man pickpockets another whilst looking for affirmation from the ecclesiastical figure. The implication is that the thief is doing the work of stealing for the Church. The monstrous satisfaction of the bishop’s gesture is a damning accusation of the role of the Catholic Church in Argentina. The return to democracy presented an opportunity for many artists to be able to make works that commented on the social and political landscape and this work from 1986 would likely not have passed through the censorship which prevailed during the dictatorship. The Church had a close relationship to the military regime and perhaps Scafati is attempting to criticise the continued role of the Church in democratic Argentina.
Pablo Suárez, Desnudo masculino, (Male Nude, 1981)
This work returns to a motif present in much of ESCALA’s holdings of Argentine art made during and after the military dictatorship. As Maria Teresa Constantin has put it ‘n the displacement produced in the period [of the dictatorship], the human body is fostered as protagonist and centre of the work and is one of the unifying concepts of diverse artistic productions. And, if in some of the artists [work] it is present before 1976, during the period [the human form] reaffirms its presence.’ Suárez’s male nude is an example of the prominence of the human form in Argentine art made since 1976. Of Suarez’s art, Constantin has said that the‘…occurrences from personal life and political and social events intertwine’ and the human body becomes the means of representing this intersection. Suárez painted this in 1981, whilst the dictatorship was in its final years. Reading this painting as depicting a male hooded figure and one of the tortured captives held by the military connects this work with the recent past. The figure appears to have his hands tied behind his back and is on his knees. The lines drawn over the figure appear to represent the bars of a cell in which the figure is being held. Although it is uncertain whether this work was shown in Argentina at the time it was made, with the knowledge today of the existence of clandestine torture sites in Argentina this work brings to mind the suffering of many at the hands of repressive regime. The captive figure speaks to a history of which more is known 40 years after the beginning of the dictatorship.
Fernando Traverso, 350, Intervención urbana Rosario (350, Urban Intervention, Rosario, 2001)
Traverso’s series of bicycles are part performance, documentation and urban intervention. Traverso was an activist in Rosario Argentina who was exiled following the coup. Traverso’s stencilled bicycles are a form of memorial to those killed during the repression in Argentina.Traverso explains that ‘[t]he means of transport most used by students, workers and local militants was, and still is, the bicycle. Many of them were left abandoned after the kidnapping and disappearance of their owners after the terrible war that followed the military coup of March 1976.’ Each of these bicis stands as a marker or memorial to a disappeared person whose bike would remain abandoned after their disappearance. The title of the work 350, Urban Intervention, Rosario refers directly to the number of disappeared from Rosario, which stands at more than 350 people. The year that Traverso did these interventions (2001) was the year Argentina was plunged into an economic crisis; the result of years of bad administration in the 1990s. This project has an afterlife as the bicycles have come to represent global activism, appearing in other parts of Latin America and even in Europe. Their meaning has been adjusted to specific causes both local and global, ranging from environmental issues to tackling poverty.
Andrés Waissman, Todavía quedan ganas de bailar, (Still Feel Like Dancing, 1995)
Waissman’s watercolour is a work the artist has said is ‘representative’ of his art. The work depicts what appear to be three ghostly figures floating in a mass of dark tones. Two figures appear to be female and one resembles a hooded figure with hands above their head as if bound. Of this work Waissman has said that it belongs to ‘… a series of works that relates to the reality of the 1970s and 80s Argentina. The characters are the protagonists of those terrible days.’ The twisted bodies of these figures are symbolic of the thousands of tortured bodies during the dictatorship. The title itself however, is ambiguous and could be a positive message which speaks of the possibility of overcoming and working through the ‘terrible days’ that many experienced. As Waissman puts it ‘the desire to go on remains; the desire to go forward: despite the cruelty, the contradictions, the characteristics of our people and the impotence of an immense, rich nation that has been impoverished by bad administrations and the search for an identity that at times seems lost.’ Considering Waissman’s perspective, the piece does maintain an optimistic message as represented by one of the figures which appears to be smiling, the hope amongst the darkness that engulfed Argentina during the dictatorship and which continued to threaten democratic Argentina through corruption, bad governments and the lack of accountability for the past. There is still the desire to dance in spite of the violent events in Argentina’s past.
Horacio Zabala, Pena de muerte, (Death Sentence, 1994)
Zabala’s Pena de muerte appears to resemble the pages of a newspaper. The text in this newspaper is indecipherable; the only word that is discernible is the beginning of the word Página which likely refers to the title of Argentina’s Left-Wing newspaper Página 12 (Page 12). Many of Zabala’s works use the readymade as a way of looking and questioning the uses of everyday objects. This work subverts the form of a newspaper as a legible object able to convey information to its readers. This newspaper does not perform its primary function and thus serves to question the extent to which newspapers can really impart truths. The work is from a series called Duplicaciones (Duplications) Zabala started in 1984 where he created these indecipherable copies of newspapers playing on the reproducibility of news media. Of these he states, ‘[t]he paradox is that the true “unique originals” are the “copies.”’ ESCALA holds two examples of these newspaper duplications. Alluding to news media is interesting when considering the prevalent censorship during the dictatorship. Pagina 12, first published in 1987 in democratic Argentina, has a reputation for its leftist writing and journalism and features the type of journalism that would have been difficult to publish during the dictatorship. One of its journalists Horacio Verbitzsky published the Captain Scilingo confessions about the death flights during the dictatorship and recently the newspaper has been accused of being overly sympathetic to the Kirchnerist governments of Néstor Kirchner (In office 2003-2007) and Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner (2007-2015). Zabala left Argentina for Rome in 1976 only to return after the return to democracy. Zabala, prior to 1976, had been a member of Grupo de los trece (Group of Thirteen) and was part of the Arte de sistemas (Art of Systems) exhibition held at CAyC - Centro de Arte y Comunicación (the Centre for Art and Communication). Grupo de los trece hold an important place in the development of Conceptual art in Argentina in the period before the last military dictatorship.
Sebastian Bustamante-Brauning 2016
Editor Dr Joanne Harwood
1 Marguerite Feitlowitz , A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture, New York, Oxford University Press, 1998, 38-39.
2 This is now termed State Terrorism in Argentina, a term used by many human rights organisations and more recently in official discourse.
3 “Painful search for Argentina’s disappeared” BBC News website, 24 03.2013 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-21884147 (Accessed 01/03/16).
4 Feitlowitz, 1998, 3.
5 da Silva Catela “Exponer lo Invisible. Una Etnografía sobre la transformación de Centros Clandestinos de Detención en Sitios de Memoria en Córdoba-Argentina” in Tania Medalla et al (ed.), Recordar Para Pensar/Memoria para la Democracia/La elaboración del pasado reciente en el Cono Sur de América Latina, La Fundación Política verde (Ediciones Böll Cono Sur, 2010), URL: http://cecla.uchile.cl/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Libro_Recordar_para_Pensar.pdf (Accessed 02/03/2016), 46-49. All translations are my own except otherwise stated
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 “Macri reforma el espacio de la memoria de la ESMA”, El Pais (27.01.16) http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2016/01/27/argentina/1453933107_183626.html (Accessed 01.03.16).
10 Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo Website, News, http://www.abuelas.org.ar/noticia/los-organismos-de-ddhh-se-reunieron-con-el-presidente-macri-338 (Accessed 01.03.16)
11See Cecilia Sosa, Queering acts of Mourning in the Aftermath of Argentina’s Dictatorship, Tamesis Books, 2014.
12 Zabala does not describe himself as an exile on his Artist’s website http://www.horaciozabala.com.ar/ , however others have: see Dolinko, “Biografía de los artistas,” Entre el silencio y la violencia, arteBA Fundación, 2004, 225.
13 Escraches were actions done by H.I.J.O.S, a human rights organisation principally formed of children of the disappeared and killed, former political prisoners, and exiles. Escraches were a form of public protest where members of the group would demonstrate outside the house of a known repressor creating a form grassroots justice when the courts had failed to bring repressors to trial. The word is a Lunfardo word (derived from a form of slang spoken in the 19th Century in Buenos Aires which now forms part of the Argentine vernacular). Kaiser translates this word as ‘to uncover.’ See Kaiser, S “Escraches: demonstrations, communication and Political Memory in Post-Dictatorial Argentina” Media Culture & Society, 24(4), 2002.
14 “El Siluetazo” is not translated and the original Spanish term is often used. The word ‘silueta’ means ‘sihouette’ which is the root of the word.
15 María Teresa Constantin, Cuerpo Y Materia: Arte Argentino Entre 1976 y 1983, Imago Espacio de Art (2006), 12.
16 Some of the ideas and text are taken from ESCALA’s online entries written by Joanne Harwood and Remo Bianchedi’s artist statement translated by Joanne Harwood is available on the ESCALA online catalogue http://www.escala.org.uk/collection/artists/remo-bianchedi/AUTH82 (Accessed, 01.03.16).
17 Marcelo Brodsky “Artist Statement” translated by Valerie Fraser available on ESCALA’s online catalogue: http://www.escala.org.uk/collection/artists/marcelo-brodsky/AUTH92/1er-ano-6ta-division-1967/O591 (Accessed, 01.03.16).
18 Ana Eckell ‘La dictadura es el episodio que más me marcó en la vida [… ]En ese momento secuestraban y mataban gente y uno no podía ayudar ni modificar nada […] Creo que si no hubiera hecho esos trabajos me hubiera vuelto loca.’ “Ana Eckell Me hice amiga de mi sombra” in Victoria Verlichak En la palma de la mano: Artistas de los Ochenta, Ediciones Alon, Buenos Aires, 2005, 136.
19 During the Presidency of Carlos Menem (1989-1999).
20 Feitlowitz, 1998, 33.
21 ESCALA archive, León Ferrari archival material.
22 Hector Giuffré Artist statement, ESCALA online Catalogue, http://www.escala.org.uk/collection/artists/hector-giuffre/AUTH191 (Accessed, 01.03.16).
23 Marisa Rueda Artist Statement, ESCALA online catalogue, http://www.escala.org.uk/collection/artists/marisa-rueda/AUTH332 (Accessed 01.03.16)
24 Rueda discussed this at a symposium at firstsite, Colchester in 1997. Audio of these discussions are available from ESCALA’s archive.
25 Scilingo quoted in Feitlowitz, 1998, 228.
26 Marisa Rueda Artist Statement, ESCALA online catalogue, http://www.escala.org.uk/collection/artists/marisa-rueda/AUTH332 (Accessed 01.03.16).
27 Writings on Scafati’s Untitled (1984) were written with contributions from ESCALA’s Object-Based Learning Frontrunner Sebastian Borghi.
28 ‘En los desplazamientos producidos durante el período, el cuerpo humano es potenciado como protagonista y centro de la obra, y es uno de los ejes unificadores de las diversas producciones artísticas. Y, si bien en algunos de los artistas está presente antes de 1976, durante el periodo reafirma su presencia.’ Constantin, Cuerpo Y Materia (2006), 12.
29 ‘… se entretejen los acontecimientos de la vida personal con los sucesos políticos o sociales.’ Ibid, 13
30 Fernando Traverso Arist Statement, ESCALA online catalogue, http://www.escala.org.uk/collection/artists/fernando-traverso/AUTH378 (Accessed, 01.03.16).
31 Katherine Hite, “The Globality of Art and Memory Making: The Bicis of Fernando Traverso” Politics and the Art of Commemoration: Memorials to Struggle in Latin America and Spain Routledge (2012)90. Hite describes being struck by how the bicis reminded her of monuments although this is something that she claims Traverso desists in describing the stencils.
32 ibid,109.
33 Andrés Waissman’s Artist Statement, ESCALA online catalogue. http://www.escala.org.uk/collection/artists/andres-waissman/AUTH397 (Accessed, 01.03.16).
34 ibid.
35 ‘La paradoja de que los verdaderos “originales únicos” sean las “copias”’, Lauria, Adriana y Enrique Llambías, Horacio Zabala. Anteproyectos, Centro Virtual de Arte Argentino,
http://cvaa.com.ar/02dossiers/zabala/04_obras_05a.php (Accessed 01/03/16).
36 According to Silvia Dolinko the artist was exiled in Rome, Doniko, “Biografía de los artistas,” Entre el silencio y la violencia, arteBA Fundación, 2004, 225. This is not something the artist refers to in his own biography available on his own website.
Bibliography
• Casanegra, Mercedes, Entre el silencio y la violencia, arteBA Fundación, Buenos Aires, 2004, (Exhibition Catalogue)
• Constantin, María Teresa, Cuerpo Y Materia: Arte Argentino Entre 1976 y 1983, Imago Espacio de Art, Buenos Aires, 2006. (Exhibition Catalogue)
• Feitlowitz, Marguerite, A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture, New York, Oxford University Press, 1998.
• Hite, Katherine, Politics and the Art of Commemoration: Memorials to Struggle in Latin America and Spain, Routledge, New York, 2012.
• Kaiser, Susana “Escraches: demonstrations, communication and Political Memory in Post-Dictatorial Argentina” Media Culture & Society, 24(4), 2002.
• Sosa, Cecilia, Queering acts of Mourning in the Aftermath of Argentina’s Dictatorship, Tamesis Books, Suffolk, 2014.
• Verlichak, Victoria, En la palma de la mano: Artistas de los Ochenta, Ediciones Alon, Buenos Aires, 2005.
Online sources:
• Centro Cultural de Recoleta, Museum website, http://www.centroculturalrecoleta.org/nuevositio/
• Essex Collection of Art from Latin America, Online Catalogue, http://www.escala.org.uk/
• Horacio Zabala Artist Website, http://www.horaciozabala.com.ar/
• “Painful search for Argentina’s disappeared” BBC News website, 24 03.2013 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-21884147 (Accessed 01/03/16).
• Tania Medalla et al (ed.), Recordar Para Pensar/Memoria para la Democracia/La elaboración del pasado reciente en el Cono Sur de América Latina, La Fundación Política verde (Ediciones Böll Cono Sur, 2010), URL: http://cecla.uchile.cl/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Libro_Recordar_para_Pensar.pdf
• “Macri reforma el espacio de la memoria de la ESMA”, El Pais (27.01.16) http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2016/01/27/argentina/1453933107_183626.html
• Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo Website, News, http://www.abuelas.org.ar/noticia/los-organismos-de-ddhh-se-reunieron-con-el-presidente-macri-338
To fit history into discreet moments is a difficult task. History conceived of in linear fashion can be as detrimental as it is useful for those wishing to understand the past. A preface is needed to understand the rationale behind choosing a time period between 1976-2016 for this week of events and temporary exhibition at ESCALA’s new Teaching and Research Space using the collection’s holdings of art from Argentina. This year coincides with the forty years since the last military coup d’état in Argentina on 24th March 1976. This moment was followed by a period of intense repression during what the military junta termed the Proceso de reorganización nacional (National Reorganisation Process). The repression had started before this moment in different parts of the country but it is this date that, since 2006, has been the Día nacional de la memoria por la verdad y justicia (National Day of Memory for Truth and Justice) in Argentina and prior to this date it was an important day for human rights organisations.
The period following 1976 was one of the bloodiest episodes in recent Argentine history. The military junta, initially led by Jorge Rafael Videla (army), Emilio Eduardo Massera (navy) and Orlando Ramón Agosti (air force) institutionalised a terror campaign against the population of Argentina and those it deemed to be enemies. Leftist groups were seen as an illness which needed eradicating, the regime painted itself as the cure the country needed. Kidnappings were a regular occurrence following the coup and many of those abducted were taken to the hundreds of clandestine detention centres that emerged in the capital and the provinces of Argentina. These spaces were the sight of atrocities including torture, killings and disappearances. Los desaparecidos (the Disappeared) became the term used to describe those who were kidnapped by the regime and whose whereabouts remain unknown. These tactics of enforced disappearance sought to spread fear in the general population and prevent opposition to the Proceso. The number of disappeared is still a figure that is contested with estimates ranging from 20,000-30,000.
Following a period of economic decline and the Argentine defeat at the hands of the better-equipped British Army during the Malvinas/Falkland War in 1982, democracy was once again restored in Argentina. This was not, however, before members of the departing military were able to grant themselves amnesties from prosecution. The first democratically elected post-dictatorship President Raúl Alfonsin (in office 1983-1989) started a process of reconciliation by revoking these amnesties and setting up the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP). The findings of this commission were published in 1984 in the Nunca más (Never Again) report and high ranking military generals were tried in the initial Trials of the Juntas in 1985. Whilst moving towards promoting truth and reconciliation, two laws were also introduced during the Alfonsín presidency which brought limits to justice seeking: La ley de punto final (Full Stop Law, 1986) put a statute of limitations of human rights cases being brought to trial and La ley de obedencia debida (Law of Due Obedience, 1987) prevented low-ranking military personnel from being brought to trial. Those exempted from prosecution were said to be only following orders.
The 20th anniversary of the military coup in 1996 was a period of intensified activity by human rights activists and artists making work which dealt with the period of the dictatorship and its effects. During the government of Carlos Menem (in office 1989-1999) the official government policy became one of turning over a new leaf in history and forgetting the past. Menem used his time in office to give presidential pardons to thirty nine military officers convicted in the initial trials. What work was done towards truth and reconciliation was reversed during Menem’s ‘age of impunity.’ Da Silva Catela has described three periods of memory in the return to democracy, especially relating to the opening of memory spaces in former detention centres in Argentina. The first, the return to of democracy, was when questions of the fate of the disappeared begun to be asked and survivors’ testimonies became public information. Former clandestine detention centres were also brought to the attention of society. The twenty year anniversary (1996) was the second moment when groups and individuals appealed to society to remember when justice in the courts had failed and Menem’s presidential pardons promoted official forgetting. Many of the artists included in this exhibition were active in producing works that directly reflected the atmosphere of this time and the need to promote remembering in Argentina when the government wanted society to forget.
With the election of President Néstor Kirchner (in office 2003-2007) there began a period of ‘State Memory Policies’. In 2003, the Final Stop Law and the Due Obedience Law were repealed. Néstor Kirchner attended the opening of a memory museum in the former detention centre the ESMA (Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada- Navy Mechanics School) in 2004 and in a symbolic act marking the 30 years since the coup in 2006, the 24th March was established as the National Day of Memory and the history of the dictatorship was taught in schools, marking a significant shift in institutional memory discourse. Official support for memory projects continued under the presidency of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (in office 2007-2015).
The forty year since the coup, which will be commemorated on the 24th March 2016, presents a precarious moment for many human rights organisations in Argentina. It is unclear what the recent election of Mauricio Marci (in office since December 2015) means for memory projects in the country and the official support and financing during the period of Kirschnerism looks under threat. Macri has demonstrated a desire to involve himself in the operations of the National Archive of Memory by removing its president Horacio Pietragalla from his position. This move has received a lot of criticism from human rights groups in Argentina and groups such as the Abuelas de la plaza de mayo - Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo (a group of relatives of the disappeared searching to recover grandchildren who were given up for illegal adoptions by the military regime) have drafted statements of their ‘concern’ regarding the new government’s approach to remembering.
The repression presented an extensive challenge for many artists. Many of the artists included in this exhibition were directly affected by the dictatorship and some had relatives and friends who disappeared. The effects of the dictatorship were felt by large sectors of society and, as Cecilia Sosa has articulated, the experience of trauma goes beyond that experienced by blood relatives of victims.
Some of the artists presented here were exiled: Marcelo Brodsky, León Ferrari and Horacio Zabala left Argentina following 1976. Others were outside of Argentina at the time of the coup: Marisa Rueda and Remo Bianchedi had to try and understand what was happening in their native Argentina from abroad. Some artists formed part of a generation working after the return to democracy who attempted to communicate, through their practice, what could not be said during the dictatorship. The 1990s were a time of grassroots activism on the streets of Argentina. Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo (Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo) had been holding weekly marches in Buenos Aires’s most central plaza demanding the return of their disappeared relatives. These marches were held in the face of repression during the dictatorship. Alongside the Madres, other groups such as H.I.J.O.S also emerged in the 1990s promoting a form of justice in the streets through Escraches. Art and activism shared common ground in collective actions such as the El Siluetazo in 1983. The aim of this action was to give a visual representation to the thousands of disappeared in Argentina by putting cut out silhouettes of the disappeared in public places such as the Plaza de Mayo and outside former detention centres. These actions made the disappeared visible and made the past a reality that could not be ignored. ESCALA’s holdings of Argentine art have many examples of artists deeply concerned with actively remembering and presenting a challenge to the silence which prevailed during the dictatorship and which threatened the newly restored democracy.
Fernando Traverso’s stencilled bicycles were the artist’s way of using the streets of his hometown of Rosario as the setting to remember his disappeared friends. The work of the art collective Grupo Escombros captures some of the energy surrounding art in the streets which made bold statements targeting injustices in Argentina. One of Grupo Escombros’ activist/artistic statements was to plaster posters on the streets of La Plata during the 20th Anniversary of the coup in 1996. Marcelo Brodsky, in that same moment, was part of a series of commemorative acts at his school in Buenos Aires to remember those who disappeared or were killed. As part of these commemorations Brodsky showed his inscribed class photograph to new generations of students at the school so they could understand and experience the past. This photograph is now permanently displayed at Brodsky’s high school. León Ferrari also showed his series of Nunca más collages in 1996 in the book XX años (Twenty Years) which included works by 360 artists. Grupo Escombros’ El hombre roto (the broken man) was also included in this book and accompanying exhibition staged to mark the twenty years since the last military coup. Ferrari’s series of collages had previously been published the year before in left-wing newspaper Pagina 12 alongside the re-publication of the 1984 CONADEP Nunca más report.
Newspapers and language were the theme of Horacio Zabala’s indecipherable mock newspapers that he begun to produce in the 1980s and 1990s, perhaps reflecting the censorship of the dictatorship and the role of the media in transmitting truth in society after the dictatorship. The generation of artists in the 1980s and 1990s depicted the violence of the 1970s in their art. Ana Eckell painted sinister characters that evoke military generals or in some instances the tortured bodies of people. Monstrous ecclesiastical figures were Luis Scafati’s way of condemning the role of the Church during the dictatorship and the period following the return to democracy. Hector Giuffré chose the year of the return to democracy (1983) to attempt to depict the absence left by the country’s thousands of disappeared, referencing Dutch Golden Age paintings to transmit this message. What is more, the body became a prominent theme in art made after 1976 and Pablo Suaréz’s and Andrés Waissman’s works are two example of the way that the human form became an expression of the lasting effects of the dictatorship on Argentine society.
Remo Bianchedi, La nostalgia de Antonio S. (Antonio S.’s Nostalgia, 1976)
Bianchedi painted La nostalgia de Antonio S. in 1976 in Kassel Germany during a period of study. This work was made in the same moment that the military junta was kidnapping, torturing and killing Argentines. Bianchedi’s work makes reference to Argentine traditions. Drinking Mate tea is a practice that has come to define countries like Argentina and neighbouring Uruguay. As Bianchedi states in his artist statement for ESCALA, Mate is ‘a national symbol. ’ The bombilla (straw) and mate (gourd) become signs which signify Argentine culture. Perhaps the nostalgia that Bianchedi describes is for those he left behind in Argentina, those identified by their common practice of drinking Mate. The figure in the picture is contorted, or as Bianchedi puts it ‘mutilated’ and ‘reassembled’ beyond recognition. This could allude to the news of the repression and torture of bodies in Argentina in 1976 that was becoming international news. Bianchedi’s work is hard to decipher, but he has indicated the importance of the moment in which the work was made and the subsequent disappearance of thousands during and after 1976. The work to some extent anticipates the repression, as Bianchedi puts it: ‘Art illustrates History, too.’
Marcelo Brodsky, 1er año, 6ta division, 1967 (1st year, 6th division, 1967, 1996) and Puente de la memoria (Memory Bridge, 1996)
Brodsky’s class photograph is a work that has been exhibited on a number of occasions and has been used to teach on human rights at the University of Essex. The artist was exiled during the dictatorship and his brother Fernando was one of those who disappeared from the clandestine detention centre the ESMA. After the return to democracy, Brodsky tried to ‘work on [his] identity,’ to find out what had happened to his former classmates. The result of this encounter led Brodsky to enlarge his class photograph from 1967 and inscribed on its surface (with crayons) short phrases explaining what had happened to each of his classmates since the photograph was taken. The accounts narrate occurrences that anyone might identify with, a classmate who now ‘lives in Vienna’, another ‘is a dentist’. Two classmates’ inscriptions however, tell of histories intimately connected with the history of the dictatorship. Claudio, we learn, ‘was killed in a confrontation’ and Martín, Brodsky’s closest friend, was ‘one of the first they [the military] took.’ Brodsky’s inscribed class photo was first shown in his school as part of commemorations marking the 20 years since the military coup. Puente de la memoria (Memory Bridge) aimed to get the new generation of students at Brodsky’s school to understand and remember what had happened to the school’s former students during the dictatorship. Brodsky produced a video work with Rosario Suarez which showed part of this act of remembrance which can be seen in ESCALA’s archive and in the ESCALA Teaching and Research space in this temporary exhibition.
Ana Eckell, Untitled, (1985)
Eckell’s work is from a series she made just after the end of the dictatorship. These works sit between abstraction and figuration and often depict sinister figures in seemingly violent and disturbing poses. This work Untitled (1985) shows two male figures in a violent exchange. The figure on the right wears glasses and what appear to be military boots, his body is contorted as if turning his back on the other figure, that of a bald man to the left of him. He seems to be spitting into the mouth of the other figure. This work was made in 1985, the year of the initial trials against the military juntas. Although Eckell’s characters are often fictional ones, the man on the right starts to take on the likeness of General Videla the former dictator of Argentina. Eckell has said that ‘[t]he dictatorship was the episode that most marked me in my life […] In that moment they kidnapped and they killed people and one couldn’t help or change anything[…] I think if I hadn’t made those works I would have gone crazy.’ Eckell’s portrayal of violence is clearly a way of dealing with Argentina’s past. The 1980s was the moment when many artists finally felt able to express themselves after the prevalent censorship during the dictatorship.
Grupo Escombros, Mar (Sea) and archival objects, (1993)
Grupo Escombros’s Mar is one of the collective’s ‘objetos de conciencia’ (‘objects of conscience’). The collective, formed in 1988 in La Plata, drew together strands of political activism with art. The group called itself ‘artistas de lo que queda’ (artists of what remains) and the word ‘escombros’ means ‘rubble’ or ‘debris’ in English evoking a sense of a group of artists emerging from the rubble left from the years of violence in Argentina. Grupo Escombros was active in the post-dictatorship period challenging injustice and inequality as well as bringing environmental issues to the fore. Mar was a work first produced in August 1993 which comprised of 500 black refuse bags placed outside and on the first floor of the Museum of Modern Art in Buenos Aires. The definition of the word corruption was printed on each of these bags. The object in ESCALA’s holdings is one of these bags that the group distributed alongside the intervention at the museum. Inside the box is a black plastic refuse sack with the words ‘Arroje aqui todo lo que corrompe’ (throw away all that corrupts in here), the group are inviting the object’s beholding to participate in demanding an end to corruption. Grupo Escombros was responding to the reality of Argentina in the 1990s which was rife with corruption and hyperinflation. This period was one of intense activism on the city streets of Argentina during the period of Menemismo. In 1996 on the 20th year anniversary of the military coup, Grupo Escombros took to the streets with a poster titled 1976 24 de marzo 1996. 500 of these posters were put up in the city of La Plata and 600 were distributed. This work was also published in the newspaper El día de La Plata. The archival material shown here refers to some of these commemorative acts and a reproduction of the poster, 1976 24 de marzo 1996, can be seen in some of these archival holdings.
León Ferrari, Nunca más, (Never Again, 1995)
León Ferrari’s Nunca más illustrations were published in the left-wing newspaper Pagina 12 in 1995 alongside the re-publication in weekly instalments of the 1984 Nunca más report. This series of collages draws on newspaper clippings the artist had compiled during the dictatorship which described the discovery of bodies on the shores of Argentina and Uruguay. Some of these clippings form part of another series called Nosotros no sabíamos (We Didn’t Know, 1976-1992) where Ferrari collected news stories printed at the height of the repression. In the Nunca más series Ferrari juxtaposes these clippings with images of military generals, catholic priests, depictions of Adolf Hitler and historic paintings including Hans Memling’s The Last Judgement (1467-1471). This series, which was originally shown at the Art Exchange-University of Essex in 2006, captures events from the dictatorship and post–dictatorship period and draws parallels with world history and iconography. Memling’s Hell is compared to the junta’s Argentina: the ESMA clandestine detention centre is surrounded by the tortured souls in Memling’s triptych. According to testimonies, the ESMA was the last known place where León Ferrari’s son, Ariel, was taken after he was fatally injured by military forces. One of those complicit in Ariel’s abduction and death was Alfredo Astiz a navy commander known as the “Blond Angel of Death.” Ferrari depicts Astiz in another of his collages; behind Astiz is a cutting of Leonardo da Vinci’s skull, View of a skull (1489). Astiz is uniformed, the photograph was taken whilst Astiz was being tried in 1984 in the Trials of the Juntas, da Vinci’s skull looms in the background as if judging Astiz for the many deaths for which he was responsible.
The testimonies of those held in clandestine detention centres came to the public’s attention in the 1984 CONADEP truth commission and Nunca más report. Some of the collages reproduce these testimonies, one reads “Cuando nos golpeban nos decían. Somos la Gestapo” (“When they hit us they told us. We are the Gestapo”). Feitlowitz has drawn parallels between the Argentine military generals’ construction of their enemy as dirty and in need of cleaning to similar practices in Nazi Germany; Ferrari is keen to highlight these resemblances. The collages also seek to attack the complicity of the Church in human rights abuses and in preventing truth-seeking in democratic Argentina. Ferrari reproduces images of priests and cardinals meeting with generals who appear to be blessing the generals’ actions. This series drew criticism from the military in the 1990s that was unhappy with the parallels Ferrari drew with Nazi Germany. The Casa rosada (Pink House), the presidential palace in Buenos Aires, is depicted in another of these collages. In condemnation of General Videla’s period of rule, the Pink House consumes Videla and in turn, the larger figure of Adolf Hitler devours the presidential palace. The statement is a damning attack on the military regime which Ferrari compares to National Socialism in Germany.
Hector Giuffré, Naturaleza muerta, (Still Life, 1983)
This edition is of a painting Giuffré made in 1983, the year democracy was restored in Argentina. In this moment, artists produced work that dealt with the realities of the dictatorship. The effects of years of censorship and limits on artistic expression meant that even in 1983 fear was still present in society. This still life has obvious links to Joannes Vermeer’s De Melkmeid (The Milkmaid, 1657-1658) but coded in this depiction is a reference to the thousands of disappeared people in Argentina. The jug used by the milkmaid in the original Vermeer painting is on the table, but missing from the painting is the milkmaid herself. This absence underlies that of a generation of Argentines who were killed, disappeared or exiled from the country because of the repression. When asked about this work, the artist has described the significance of the fish laid out on the table. Giuffré has discussed the series of still lives he painted of violence against animals as ‘visual metaphors that allowed me to relate my compositions to the violence of current reality: the criminality through which Argentina passed during the period of military dictatorship.’ He describes the Dorado fish, a species which has been overfished to the point of extinction in Argentina, as a metaphor for enforced disappearances in Argentina during the dictatorship. With the passing of time, and since the knowledge of death flights (where the disappeared were thrown from planes into the sea) in Argentina, the Dorado on the table takes on extended symbolic meaning when representing the country’s disappeared..
Marisa Rueda, … y después se erigen monumentos, (… and afterwards they erect monuments, 1976)
At the time of the military coup Marisa Rueda was in England. It was in London that Rueda heard reports of the atrocities being committed her native Argentina. The artist produced the sculpture y después se erigen monumentos in response to the situation in Argentina as she attempted to bring to light the realities of torture in Argentina to international audiences. This work was shown at an exhibition organised by Amnesty International in London to highlight human rights abuses in Argentina. When choosing a title for the work Rueda states, ‘I thought the day would come when monuments to these victims would be erected. Even [when] those democratic governments worldwide that did not want to consider the military in Argentina to have been dictators [sic]. Those that were turning a blind eye, or even selling arms to them; they would pay for these monuments…’ Rueda’s sculpture is prophetic as, since the period of State Memory Policies from 2006, many monuments have been erected in former detention centres.
Rueda has discussed the influence of artists such as Francis Bacon on her practice and this work evokes the similarly tortured bodies present in some of Bacon’s paintings. This torso, stretched over a wooden frame, brings to mind the many clandestine torture sites that were in operation in Argentina during the dictatorship. This twisted, contorted figure becomes representative of the Argentine civil society which bore the horrors of the period of dictatorship. The private suffering of those held in captivity is brought to the attention of the public through Rueda’s sculptural monument.
Marisa Rueda, Ellos también rezan, (They also pray, undated)
Rueda’s Ellos también rezan is an explicit condemnation of the role of the Catholic Church in atrocities committed during the dictatorship. In 1995 the confession of retired Navy Captain Adolfo Scilingo brought the knowledge of death flights to the public’s attention. Scilingo confessed to having been involved in throwing heavily drugged prisoners from airplanes into the sea. Scilingo’s superiors stated that “ecclesiastic authorities had assured [them] that this was a Christian, basically nonviolent form of death”. Rueda’s sculpture depicts a praying general being absolved for his crimes. Her title: They also Pray suggests the generals believed they were fighting a moral, Christian crusade against subversion. Of this work Rueda asks ‘how can a person in charge of torture, disappearance and killing pray? What does he feel so righteous about? And why? Is he asking for help in his ‘job’ [sic]’ It is the complicity of the Catholic Church Rueda choses to denounce and all those priests who blessed the nefarious practices of the military regime.
Luis Scafati, Untitled, (1984)
Luis Scafati is an important illustrator of books and newspapers in Argentina, having illustrated editions of Kafka’s Metamorphosis (1915) published in its centenary (2015)as well as his version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), which was published in the UK by Bloody Books in 2008. Using Chinese ink, Scafati has covered many political themes in his work including corruption, the role of the Church in society and the dictatorship which is a theme he has returned to on a number of occasions. In 1976, Scafati was studying drawing at the University of Cuyo when, following the coup, Scafati was expelled from the faculty. The artist continued to publish under the pseudonym ‘Fati’ in popular newspapers in Argentina and abroad. ESCALA’s two works by Scafati were done following the return to democracy in Argentina.
The drawing Untitled (1984) by Luis Scafati represents an anonymous crowd of male silhouettes on in the lower-half of the frame. A bigger, taller figure stands in the foreground of the image. The figure is a handcuffed jester pulled by a rope or chains whilst the faceless crowd goes on with their daily life. The artwork, which was made just one year after the Argentine dictatorship came to an end, may allegorically refer to the political transition towards democracy. The jester possibly recalls his symbolic role of being the only character in the royal court allowed to mock others, even the sovereign. The jester to some extent had the privilege of being able to speak the truth veiled in jokes. In Scafati’s drawing the jester looks melancholic, the handcuffs represent his inability to continue to speak the truth. Even after the return to democracy, the past was not confronted by all of society, here represented as the faceless masses. Humour, a key feature of many of Scafati’s illustrations, and an attribute of the jester, is missing in this work.
Luis Scafati, Untitled (1986)
Scafati’s second work depicts a monstrous bishop rubbing his hands together while bile flows from his mouth. A group of three people stand beside the bishop, one man pickpockets another whilst looking for affirmation from the ecclesiastical figure. The implication is that the thief is doing the work of stealing for the Church. The monstrous satisfaction of the bishop’s gesture is a damning accusation of the role of the Catholic Church in Argentina. The return to democracy presented an opportunity for many artists to be able to make works that commented on the social and political landscape and this work from 1986 would likely not have passed through the censorship which prevailed during the dictatorship. The Church had a close relationship to the military regime and perhaps Scafati is attempting to criticise the continued role of the Church in democratic Argentina.
Pablo Suárez, Desnudo masculino, (Male Nude, 1981)
This work returns to a motif present in much of ESCALA’s holdings of Argentine art made during and after the military dictatorship. As Maria Teresa Constantin has put it ‘n the displacement produced in the period [of the dictatorship], the human body is fostered as protagonist and centre of the work and is one of the unifying concepts of diverse artistic productions. And, if in some of the artists [work] it is present before 1976, during the period [the human form] reaffirms its presence.’ Suárez’s male nude is an example of the prominence of the human form in Argentine art made since 1976. Of Suarez’s art, Constantin has said that the‘…occurrences from personal life and political and social events intertwine’ and the human body becomes the means of representing this intersection. Suárez painted this in 1981, whilst the dictatorship was in its final years. Reading this painting as depicting a male hooded figure and one of the tortured captives held by the military connects this work with the recent past. The figure appears to have his hands tied behind his back and is on his knees. The lines drawn over the figure appear to represent the bars of a cell in which the figure is being held. Although it is uncertain whether this work was shown in Argentina at the time it was made, with the knowledge today of the existence of clandestine torture sites in Argentina this work brings to mind the suffering of many at the hands of repressive regime. The captive figure speaks to a history of which more is known 40 years after the beginning of the dictatorship.
Fernando Traverso, 350, Intervención urbana Rosario (350, Urban Intervention, Rosario, 2001)
Traverso’s series of bicycles are part performance, documentation and urban intervention. Traverso was an activist in Rosario Argentina who was exiled following the coup. Traverso’s stencilled bicycles are a form of memorial to those killed during the repression in Argentina.Traverso explains that ‘[t]he means of transport most used by students, workers and local militants was, and still is, the bicycle. Many of them were left abandoned after the kidnapping and disappearance of their owners after the terrible war that followed the military coup of March 1976.’ Each of these bicis stands as a marker or memorial to a disappeared person whose bike would remain abandoned after their disappearance. The title of the work 350, Urban Intervention, Rosario refers directly to the number of disappeared from Rosario, which stands at more than 350 people. The year that Traverso did these interventions (2001) was the year Argentina was plunged into an economic crisis; the result of years of bad administration in the 1990s. This project has an afterlife as the bicycles have come to represent global activism, appearing in other parts of Latin America and even in Europe. Their meaning has been adjusted to specific causes both local and global, ranging from environmental issues to tackling poverty.
Andrés Waissman, Todavía quedan ganas de bailar, (Still Feel Like Dancing, 1995)
Waissman’s watercolour is a work the artist has said is ‘representative’ of his art. The work depicts what appear to be three ghostly figures floating in a mass of dark tones. Two figures appear to be female and one resembles a hooded figure with hands above their head as if bound. Of this work Waissman has said that it belongs to ‘… a series of works that relates to the reality of the 1970s and 80s Argentina. The characters are the protagonists of those terrible days.’ The twisted bodies of these figures are symbolic of the thousands of tortured bodies during the dictatorship. The title itself however, is ambiguous and could be a positive message which speaks of the possibility of overcoming and working through the ‘terrible days’ that many experienced. As Waissman puts it ‘the desire to go on remains; the desire to go forward: despite the cruelty, the contradictions, the characteristics of our people and the impotence of an immense, rich nation that has been impoverished by bad administrations and the search for an identity that at times seems lost.’ Considering Waissman’s perspective, the piece does maintain an optimistic message as represented by one of the figures which appears to be smiling, the hope amongst the darkness that engulfed Argentina during the dictatorship and which continued to threaten democratic Argentina through corruption, bad governments and the lack of accountability for the past. There is still the desire to dance in spite of the violent events in Argentina’s past.
Horacio Zabala, Pena de muerte, (Death Sentence, 1994)
Zabala’s Pena de muerte appears to resemble the pages of a newspaper. The text in this newspaper is indecipherable; the only word that is discernible is the beginning of the word Página which likely refers to the title of Argentina’s Left-Wing newspaper Página 12 (Page 12). Many of Zabala’s works use the readymade as a way of looking and questioning the uses of everyday objects. This work subverts the form of a newspaper as a legible object able to convey information to its readers. This newspaper does not perform its primary function and thus serves to question the extent to which newspapers can really impart truths. The work is from a series called Duplicaciones (Duplications) Zabala started in 1984 where he created these indecipherable copies of newspapers playing on the reproducibility of news media. Of these he states, ‘[t]he paradox is that the true “unique originals” are the “copies.”’ ESCALA holds two examples of these newspaper duplications. Alluding to news media is interesting when considering the prevalent censorship during the dictatorship. Pagina 12, first published in 1987 in democratic Argentina, has a reputation for its leftist writing and journalism and features the type of journalism that would have been difficult to publish during the dictatorship. One of its journalists Horacio Verbitzsky published the Captain Scilingo confessions about the death flights during the dictatorship and recently the newspaper has been accused of being overly sympathetic to the Kirchnerist governments of Néstor Kirchner (In office 2003-2007) and Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner (2007-2015). Zabala left Argentina for Rome in 1976 only to return after the return to democracy. Zabala, prior to 1976, had been a member of Grupo de los trece (Group of Thirteen) and was part of the Arte de sistemas (Art of Systems) exhibition held at CAyC - Centro de Arte y Comunicación (the Centre for Art and Communication). Grupo de los trece hold an important place in the development of Conceptual art in Argentina in the period before the last military dictatorship.
Sebastian Bustamante-Brauning 2016
Editor Dr Joanne Harwood
1 Marguerite Feitlowitz , A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture, New York, Oxford University Press, 1998, 38-39.
2 This is now termed State Terrorism in Argentina, a term used by many human rights organisations and more recently in official discourse.
3 “Painful search for Argentina’s disappeared” BBC News website, 24 03.2013 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-21884147 (Accessed 01/03/16).
4 Feitlowitz, 1998, 3.
5 da Silva Catela “Exponer lo Invisible. Una Etnografía sobre la transformación de Centros Clandestinos de Detención en Sitios de Memoria en Córdoba-Argentina” in Tania Medalla et al (ed.), Recordar Para Pensar/Memoria para la Democracia/La elaboración del pasado reciente en el Cono Sur de América Latina, La Fundación Política verde (Ediciones Böll Cono Sur, 2010), URL: http://cecla.uchile.cl/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Libro_Recordar_para_Pensar.pdf (Accessed 02/03/2016), 46-49. All translations are my own except otherwise stated
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 “Macri reforma el espacio de la memoria de la ESMA”, El Pais (27.01.16) http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2016/01/27/argentina/1453933107_183626.html (Accessed 01.03.16).
10 Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo Website, News, http://www.abuelas.org.ar/noticia/los-organismos-de-ddhh-se-reunieron-con-el-presidente-macri-338 (Accessed 01.03.16)
11See Cecilia Sosa, Queering acts of Mourning in the Aftermath of Argentina’s Dictatorship, Tamesis Books, 2014.
12 Zabala does not describe himself as an exile on his Artist’s website http://www.horaciozabala.com.ar/ , however others have: see Dolinko, “Biografía de los artistas,” Entre el silencio y la violencia, arteBA Fundación, 2004, 225.
13 Escraches were actions done by H.I.J.O.S, a human rights organisation principally formed of children of the disappeared and killed, former political prisoners, and exiles. Escraches were a form of public protest where members of the group would demonstrate outside the house of a known repressor creating a form grassroots justice when the courts had failed to bring repressors to trial. The word is a Lunfardo word (derived from a form of slang spoken in the 19th Century in Buenos Aires which now forms part of the Argentine vernacular). Kaiser translates this word as ‘to uncover.’ See Kaiser, S “Escraches: demonstrations, communication and Political Memory in Post-Dictatorial Argentina” Media Culture & Society, 24(4), 2002.
14 “El Siluetazo” is not translated and the original Spanish term is often used. The word ‘silueta’ means ‘sihouette’ which is the root of the word.
15 María Teresa Constantin, Cuerpo Y Materia: Arte Argentino Entre 1976 y 1983, Imago Espacio de Art (2006), 12.
16 Some of the ideas and text are taken from ESCALA’s online entries written by Joanne Harwood and Remo Bianchedi’s artist statement translated by Joanne Harwood is available on the ESCALA online catalogue http://www.escala.org.uk/collection/artists/remo-bianchedi/AUTH82 (Accessed, 01.03.16).
17 Marcelo Brodsky “Artist Statement” translated by Valerie Fraser available on ESCALA’s online catalogue: http://www.escala.org.uk/collection/artists/marcelo-brodsky/AUTH92/1er-ano-6ta-division-1967/O591 (Accessed, 01.03.16).
18 Ana Eckell ‘La dictadura es el episodio que más me marcó en la vida [… ]En ese momento secuestraban y mataban gente y uno no podía ayudar ni modificar nada […] Creo que si no hubiera hecho esos trabajos me hubiera vuelto loca.’ “Ana Eckell Me hice amiga de mi sombra” in Victoria Verlichak En la palma de la mano: Artistas de los Ochenta, Ediciones Alon, Buenos Aires, 2005, 136.
19 During the Presidency of Carlos Menem (1989-1999).
20 Feitlowitz, 1998, 33.
21 ESCALA archive, León Ferrari archival material.
22 Hector Giuffré Artist statement, ESCALA online Catalogue, http://www.escala.org.uk/collection/artists/hector-giuffre/AUTH191 (Accessed, 01.03.16).
23 Marisa Rueda Artist Statement, ESCALA online catalogue, http://www.escala.org.uk/collection/artists/marisa-rueda/AUTH332 (Accessed 01.03.16)
24 Rueda discussed this at a symposium at firstsite, Colchester in 1997. Audio of these discussions are available from ESCALA’s archive.
25 Scilingo quoted in Feitlowitz, 1998, 228.
26 Marisa Rueda Artist Statement, ESCALA online catalogue, http://www.escala.org.uk/collection/artists/marisa-rueda/AUTH332 (Accessed 01.03.16).
27 Writings on Scafati’s Untitled (1984) were written with contributions from ESCALA’s Object-Based Learning Frontrunner Sebastian Borghi.
28 ‘En los desplazamientos producidos durante el período, el cuerpo humano es potenciado como protagonista y centro de la obra, y es uno de los ejes unificadores de las diversas producciones artísticas. Y, si bien en algunos de los artistas está presente antes de 1976, durante el periodo reafirma su presencia.’ Constantin, Cuerpo Y Materia (2006), 12.
29 ‘… se entretejen los acontecimientos de la vida personal con los sucesos políticos o sociales.’ Ibid, 13
30 Fernando Traverso Arist Statement, ESCALA online catalogue, http://www.escala.org.uk/collection/artists/fernando-traverso/AUTH378 (Accessed, 01.03.16).
31 Katherine Hite, “The Globality of Art and Memory Making: The Bicis of Fernando Traverso” Politics and the Art of Commemoration: Memorials to Struggle in Latin America and Spain Routledge (2012)90. Hite describes being struck by how the bicis reminded her of monuments although this is something that she claims Traverso desists in describing the stencils.
32 ibid,109.
33 Andrés Waissman’s Artist Statement, ESCALA online catalogue. http://www.escala.org.uk/collection/artists/andres-waissman/AUTH397 (Accessed, 01.03.16).
34 ibid.
35 ‘La paradoja de que los verdaderos “originales únicos” sean las “copias”’, Lauria, Adriana y Enrique Llambías, Horacio Zabala. Anteproyectos, Centro Virtual de Arte Argentino,
http://cvaa.com.ar/02dossiers/zabala/04_obras_05a.php (Accessed 01/03/16).
36 According to Silvia Dolinko the artist was exiled in Rome, Doniko, “Biografía de los artistas,” Entre el silencio y la violencia, arteBA Fundación, 2004, 225. This is not something the artist refers to in his own biography available on his own website.
Bibliography
• Casanegra, Mercedes, Entre el silencio y la violencia, arteBA Fundación, Buenos Aires, 2004, (Exhibition Catalogue)
• Constantin, María Teresa, Cuerpo Y Materia: Arte Argentino Entre 1976 y 1983, Imago Espacio de Art, Buenos Aires, 2006. (Exhibition Catalogue)
• Feitlowitz, Marguerite, A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture, New York, Oxford University Press, 1998.
• Hite, Katherine, Politics and the Art of Commemoration: Memorials to Struggle in Latin America and Spain, Routledge, New York, 2012.
• Kaiser, Susana “Escraches: demonstrations, communication and Political Memory in Post-Dictatorial Argentina” Media Culture & Society, 24(4), 2002.
• Sosa, Cecilia, Queering acts of Mourning in the Aftermath of Argentina’s Dictatorship, Tamesis Books, Suffolk, 2014.
• Verlichak, Victoria, En la palma de la mano: Artistas de los Ochenta, Ediciones Alon, Buenos Aires, 2005.
Online sources:
• Centro Cultural de Recoleta, Museum website, http://www.centroculturalrecoleta.org/nuevositio/
• Essex Collection of Art from Latin America, Online Catalogue, http://www.escala.org.uk/
• Horacio Zabala Artist Website, http://www.horaciozabala.com.ar/
• “Painful search for Argentina’s disappeared” BBC News website, 24 03.2013 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-21884147 (Accessed 01/03/16).
• Tania Medalla et al (ed.), Recordar Para Pensar/Memoria para la Democracia/La elaboración del pasado reciente en el Cono Sur de América Latina, La Fundación Política verde (Ediciones Böll Cono Sur, 2010), URL: http://cecla.uchile.cl/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Libro_Recordar_para_Pensar.pdf
• “Macri reforma el espacio de la memoria de la ESMA”, El Pais (27.01.16) http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2016/01/27/argentina/1453933107_183626.html
• Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo Website, News, http://www.abuelas.org.ar/noticia/los-organismos-de-ddhh-se-reunieron-con-el-presidente-macri-338
