The Disappeared/Los Desaparecidos

From Episcopal Cafe's Art Blog

"The word "disappeared" was redefined during the mid-20th Century in Latin America. "Disappeared" evolved into a noun used to identify people who were kidnapped, tortured and killed by their own governments in the latter decades of the twentieth century in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay and Venezuela. Colombia with its fifty-year civil war and Guatemala with its own thirty-seven-year civil war further expanded the meanings and uses of "disappeared."

"The exhibition contains work by more than fifteen contemporary artists from these countries, who over the course of the last thirty years have made art about the disappeared. These artists have lived through the horrors of the military dictatorships that rocked their countries in the mid-decades of the twentieth century. Some worked in the resistance; some had parents or siblings who were disappeared; others were forced into exile. The youngest were born into the aftermath of those dictatorships. And still others have lived in countries maimed by endless civil war.

"This traveling exhibition, curated by the North Dakota Museum of Art, will be exhibited jointly by the Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts, the Centennial Museum and the Union Gallery, all on the UTEP campus.

Luis Gonzáles Palma, (Guatemala, lives in Argentina)
1997 diptych, Empty Shirt.
One frame contains the frontal image of a Mayan woman,
the second, an empty white shirt
which stands in for the disappeared husband
Courtesy: North Dakota Musem of Art

"These artists have lived through the horrors of the military dictatorships that rocked their countries in the mid-decades of the twentieth century. Some worked in the resistance; some had parents or siblings who were disappeared; others were forced into exile. The youngest were born into the aftermath of those dictatorships. And still others live in countries maimed by endless civil war. Disappearance was inevitably linked to torture. Laurel Reuter, curator of the exhibition and director of the North Dakota Museum of Art, was struck by the timelessness and truthfulness of the art. For example, when Identidad, a collaborative installation made by thirteen Argentinean artists, opened in Buenos Aires, three people discovered their long-hidden identities. They had been taken at birth from those who opposed the government and adopted into military families. Through their art, these artists fight amnesia in their own countries as a stay against such atrocities happening again." Text courtesy of the original exhibition website at the North Dakota Museum of Art.

Current show curated by Laurel Reuter
June 18 - September 11, 2009
Rubin and L Galleries and Project Space
University of Texas at El Paso Dept. of Art
500 W. University, El Paso, Texas