BGuthrie Photos: Art Museum of the Americas -- Exhibit: The Disappeared

Art Museum of the Americas -- Exhibit: The Disappeared:

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Description of Pictures: The Disappeared
An exhibition organized by the North Dakota Museum of Art and curated by Founding Director Laurel Reuter
November 19, 2008 – January 25, 2009

ABOUT THE EXHIBIT
“To disappear” was newly defined during periods of military dictatorship in Latin America. “Disappear” evolved into a transitive verb describing individuals considered threats to the State who were kidnapped, tortured, and killed by their own military.
The Disappeared gathers the work of thirteen visual artists plus a collaborative work by thirteen others from Latin America who over the last 30 years have made art about the disappeared and addressed universal human rights concerns in a powerful and moving way. It contains works by some of the most prominent artists from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Many of them 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, drug, and guerrilla wars.
The Disappeared is a traveling exhibition organized by the North Dakota Museum of Art and curated by Founding Director Laurel Reuter. The exhibition catalog, authored by Reuter with a preface by Lawrence Weschler, was published by Charta of Milan and New York and is distributed by D.A.P. in the United States and Europe. According to New York Times critic Holland Cotter, “the bilingual catalog is a work of art in itself. From Ms. Reuter’s stunning essay to the supplementary material, it is a total-immersion emotional experience.” (April 7, 2007)
Prior to coming to the Art Museum of the Americas, The Disappeared was shown at the Museo del Barrio (New York), the Centro Cultural Recoleta (Buenos Aires), the Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales (Montevi ...More...

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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[1] DISAPP_090108_002.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[2] DISAPP_090108_007.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[3] DISAPP_090108_012.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
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[10] DISAPP_090108_072.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[11] DISAPP_090108_077.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[12] DISAPP_090108_083.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. DISAPP_090108_072.JPG: Until forced into exile, Fernando Traverso was part of the resistance movement in Rosario, Argentina. Many of his companeros in the resistance were disappeared. Often the first evidence that someone had been taken was finding his abandoned bicycle, the preferred method of transportation for resistance workers. Gradually it became more and more common to see abandoned bicycles in Rosario. At the return to democracy, Traverso resumed his work as an artist. He has created silk banners, one in honor of each of his fellow resistance workers who were disappeared. Next he spray-painted 350 life-size bicycle images throughout Rosario, representing the total number of citizens disappeared from that city by the totalitarian state. Acting after midnight or at midday, when most inhabitants would be having dinner or taking a siesta, Traverso "intervenes" on walls and street corners. To walk down a street in Rosario and find a bicycle leaning against a wall shouldn't seem odd, but moving closer we see it is the black silhouette of a bicycle that was once in just that spot, or in another, or perhaps nowhere. There are lots of bicycles, many shadows of bicycles, multiple memories of an event. Each bicycle harbors the memory of a kidnapping, of a disappearance.
2. DISAPP_090108_077.JPG: One of the most thoughtful exhibits on the Disappeared in Latin America. The artist, Fernando Traverso, found that if he visited a friend's house and their bicycle was gone, then the person had probably gone out to the store or something. If the bicycle was there but the friend wasn't, then the owner had been picked up by the police and he'd never see him again. The exhibit was at the Art Museum of the Americas.
3. DISAPP_090108_083.JPG: Fernando Traverso's Bicis From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia On March 24, 2001, Fernando Traverso, an Argentinian hospital worker, political activist, and artist, began spray painting a series of twenty-nine life-sized bicycle stencils throughout the streets of his home town Rosario as a symbolic memorial to his twenty-nine friends who were abducted, tortured and killed during Argentina's Dirty War. Today, there are 350 bici stenciled images painted on buildings throughout Rosario, memorializing each of its 350 citizens who were disappeared under Argentina's military dictatorship and National Reorganization Process (1976–1983). Background For most members of the resistance, bicycles were the primary mode of transport. As Traverso's friends began disappearing after the 1976 coup d'etat of Isabel Per�n and the ensuing Jorge Rafael Videla Redondo de facto presidency, only their bicycles would be left behind. Seeing an abandoned bicycle was often the first sign that its owner had been disappeared. These bicycles left standing in the streets of Rosario stood as memorials to those who were taken. Traverso made these memorials more permanent by spray painting the bici image on buildings throughout the city. Now, it has spread worldwide and Traverso works with many human rights organizations as well as impacted communities to raise awareness for those who are still disappearing today. Memory Art In the years following the Dirty War, Argentinians have dealt with the atrocities of the past in a myriad of ways. From the 1984 state-sponsored Nunca M�s (Never Again) truth commission to commemoration museums, memories of Argentina's brutal dictatorial past have far from disappeared; rather the opposite, they have come to dominate various arenas of Argentine culture, most notably, Argentine memory art As exemplified through the successes of Traverso's bici graffiti art campaign, memory art has become an important symbolic means of negotiating the past, not only by the artist and the effected community, but the international population as well. Alongside Traverso's graffiti art, Rosario is also home to Argentina's first official Museum of Memory which offers a nuanced narration of the nations dictatorial past. Under the direction of Ruben Chababo, the Museum of Memory opened firstly in 2004, and then in a more permanent location in 2010. Since its original opening, issues of interpretation have been paramount in its organization. As a means to avoid the implied "before" and "after" connotations of a chronological portrayal, the Museum is organized by a series of aesthetics themes ranging from clandestine imprisonments to struggles in truth and justice. However, Chababo has remarked that Rosario's true memory art cannot be found in any institution, but rather in its streets. The Bici as memorial Fernando Traverso's Bici image could originally only be found in the streets of Rosario, but has since become an international symbol remembering those who were disappeared under the various military dictatorships in Latin America, specifically during the 1970s. Traverso's memorial has transformed Rosario's urban space into a place of memory and is only one of many political memorials in Argentina and in Latin America [See External Links]. Traverso visited the US-Mexico border from May 25 through June 1, 2009 to attend the inaugural event for the exhibition of The Disappeared. During his visit he met with and held workshops for students from the Universidad Aut�noma de Ciudad Ju�rez (UACJ) in Ciudad Ju�rez, Mexico, and the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). Traverso, along with Rubin Center Assistant Director Kerry Doyle and UACJ Visual Arts Professor Leon de la Rosa, came up with Bicycles on the Border, an action using Traverso's bici image to respond to the current border realities. He held two daylong workshops at both universities, during which groups of students and community members printed images of bikes on large fabric banners. Those who participated in the action were encouraged to take the banners and take pictures of them in places along the border that evoke the ideas of disappearance, loss, or injustice that have come to be associated with the bici image. These photographs became his next project, El Nieto de Herminia (Herminia's Grandson). The image of the bici came to represent those who were disappeared. Family photos were taken with the bici in place of the missing relative. The original memorial started off small but "his art has spiraled outward, enmeshing more and more participants." His most recent project involves numbering real bicycles. He is encouraging cyclists to rescue abandoned bikes that have waited for years to be picked up by their owners. Just as the younger Argentine generations are becoming active – and demanding recognition for those who were disappeared – so are Traverso's bicis. The bici images and everything this memorial has grown to incorporate serve as a continuous reminder of those who were disappeared. In Traverso's word's, "forgetting becomes the repressor's ultimate triumph."
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2009 photos: Equipment this year: I mostly used the Fuji S100fs. I've also got a Nikon D90 and a newer Fuji -- the S200EHX -- both of which are nice but I still prefer the flexibility of the Fuji. Trips this year: Niagara Falls, NY, New York City, Civil War Trust conferences in Gettysburg, PA and Springfield, IL, and my 4th consecutive San Diego Comic-Con trip (including Los Angeles, Yosemite, Death Valley, Kings Canyon, Joshua Tree, etc). Ego strokes: I had a picture of a Lincoln-Obama cupcake sculpture published in Civil War Times and WUSA-9, the local CBS affiliate, ran a quick piece on me. A picture that I took at the annual Abraham Lincoln Symposium appeared in the National Archives' "Prologue" magazine. I became a volunteer with the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Number of photos taken this year: 417,000.
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