Trauma as a Challenge to Representation
Trauma is a theme common to artistic practices in Latin American countries. It became so as a response to environments of dictatorship and military control1. Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay experienced military upheaval within the years of 1964-1976 and it radicalized artist’s objectives towards political content (Goldman 249).
In general, the expression of oppositional beliefs through art was met with resistance. The government imposed strict censorship on many artworks and exhibitions, attempting to solely allow non-political art for public viewing2. Argentine artist Leon Ferrari best describes the conditions:
“It appears that the chronicler would like to discard art that is critical, trenchant, or corrosive, and suggests impending the exhibition of work that ‘does not allow for doubt about its leanings and therefore its objectives’… it is prior censorship.” (Giunta 279)
The development of different styles of art was a reaction to this; the artist’s desperate attempts to reach the community and fight the system. While under government domination, four philosophies of artists existed. The first in accordance to tradition that adhered to political ideologies, the second in politically charged denunciation, the third as clandestine political art, and the fourth as art of the exiled (Goldman 250). Each approach to art encountered its own individualized challenges to representing trauma, under the umbrella of government censure.
All artists dealing with messages of defiance aimed to address the majority of the public, albeit elitists whom they were trying to disaffiliate with (Camnitzer 221-222). They sought to elicit change in the community by becoming a catalyst for deliberation in the public’s eye. The emancipation of renewed thought was hoped to break away from the organized and regimented lifestyle created by dictatorship3. However, under the circumstances artists struggled to maintain a voice outside of the institution.
Most of the works began with deliberate and outspoken content. This can be demonstrated in Tucuman arde (Tucuman is Burning) by the Argentine El Grupo de Artistas de Vanguardia (The Vanguard Artists' Group) in 1968 (see Appendix A). This piece documented the trauma occurring in province of Tucuman under the repression of Ongania (Longoni 1-14; Sullivan 294). Containing such an outwardly expression of opposition, it seemed to hit a nerve with the military. Their exhibition in Buenos Aires was shut down within hours of opening. Having closed down many art shows and censored artists for a period of time, Tucuman Arde proved to be final straw for the government. As a result, a quiet era of four years ensued, called Silence of the Tucuman arde, in which political art was not evident in exhibitions or on the streets4. Although certain pieces began to make their way back into the institution, it was not until several years later that political art found its footing once again.
The second attempt at representing trauma was through the use of conceptual art. In this way, artists strived to beat the system more arbitrarily, so that the public could read between the lines whilst the military was unable (Farver and Mosquera). This proved to be more successful than the previous attempts, as there were many artists who thrived and became popular for their underground political work.
One such artist was Catalina Parra from Chile. Chile, being the most strictly regulated and longest enduring dictatorship out of the four Latin American countries under repression, was also the most difficult for artists to express political content. Parra was able to use every-day objects to create a cryptic symbolism (Richards). Since she was using mundane materials the military was blind sighted to her messages, and if they perceived one, they had no evidence to support it (see Appendix B). Catalina explains that “the message, if there is one, is in the material and in the technique – in the cuts, the tears, the ruptures, as well as in the stitches, the sutures, the bindings, and the gauze. If you know how to read, the message is there. Besides, how can you censor a knot or a tear? And I don’t say anything myself. I don’t have to.” (Goldman 253)
Although there were artists such as Catalina Parra who were successful in staying under the radar, many were not so fortunate, even through the use of Conceptual art.
Chilean artist Guillermo Nunez experienced the wrath of the government in the highest form during his attempts to reach the public (Gómez-Barris 1-17). Having experienced torture firsthand in his arrest and captivity by government officials, his art exhibited the intimate familiarity of trauma. After the controversial exhibition Instituto Chileno-Frances de Cultura, he was taken once again and forced into a concentration camp until being exiled (Goldman 252). It is speculated that his arrest can be attributed to one specific element in the exhibition that tipped off the officials: the colours of the Chilean flag.
In the defeat of representing trauma, artists were exiled by the governments in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and Chile. This technique was fairly successful, in that being Third world countries run by dictatorship, they were isolated from the rest of the world. Therefore, artists outside of the country didn’t have the means to influence the people within. Both Parra and Nunez eventually experienced exile from Chile (Goldman 251).
There were also artists who chose to leave the country and develop their skills elsewhere. Luis Camnitzer is an artist working outside of his home country Uruguay (Farver and Mosquera). Although his work, expressing the dynamics of the tortured and the torturer, does not always reach the Uruguay culture, it was viewed in the United States and around the world. In the past, Camnitzer was external to government censoring but was still required to developed skills in portraying trauma in an effective manner to his viewers. Gerardo Mosquera explains that “the result is a new approach towards political art, where the latter [art as idea as idea] is defined not in the explicit content of the image but in the multivalency of linguistic and visual codes, the subversion of accepted and anticipated meanings, the manipulations of images and language to question the logic of ideological constructs and the mechanisms of social processes in late capitalism.”
Cildo Meireles also thrived as a political artist outside of Brazil (Sullivan 225). His work went so far as to become a part of the public through circulation, uniting art and life while bringing attention to social constructivism. Meireles’s Zero Dollar, 1978-84 and Zero Centavo, 1974-78 are two instances of counterfeit money whereby he distributed the bills to the public in attempt to have them reflect upon social organization and constructions. In these works he alludes to the repression of Brazil under dictatorship5.
The era of capitalism that ensued during the late sixties and early seventies in Latin America provided limitless revolutionary goals for artist at the same time as restrictive laws for expression. In this environment artists were challenged to create innovative techniques in representing themes of trauma. While some were successful, such as Catalina Parra, others were forced into defeat and exile. In Mosquera’s opinion, the most successful method in bypassing government censure is creating “art that embodies a form of ideological resistance at the same time that it provides the viewer with the instruments to construct his own strategies of liberation” (Farver and Mosquera). In other words, the art needs to be palpable to viewers and invisible to dictators.
Stephanie Deumer
Fall 2009
Notes
1. Refer to glossary keywords Violence and Dictatorship.
2. “..to eliminate every strange body that threatens to obscure the vision of a cultural history falsely reconciled with itself.” Richards 6.
3. See Mosquera, especially CADA, 222 and Eugenio Dittborn, 254 for Chilean artists and their work that adhered to this objective throughout history.
4. On art during the Silence of Tucuman arde, see Camnitzer Chapter 8 The Aftermath of Tucuman Arde, 73 and Chapter 17 Postpolitics, 186.
5. On los desaparecidos and art of repression, see The Disappeared <http://www.ndmoa.com/Exhibitions/PastEx/Disappeared/index.html>; for comparison between Meireles and other artists.
Works Cited
Camnitzer, Luis. Conceptualism in Latin American Art: Didactics of Liberation. United States: University of Texas Press, 2007. Print.
Farver, Jane, Gerardo Mosquera, and Luis Camnitzer. Luis Camnitzer: Retrospective Exhibition 1966-1990. <
index.htm>. Web. October 13, 2009.
Giunta, Andrea. Listen Here Now! Argentine Art of the 1960s: Writings on the Avant-Garde. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2004. Print.
Goldman, Shifra M. Dimensions of the Americas: Art and Social Change in Latin America and The United States. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994. Print.
Gómez-Barris, Macarena. Chile’s Tortured Legacies: Guillermo Núñez’s Art Practice. Aug 10, 2006. <http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p105097_index.html> Web. November 16, 2009.
Longoni, Ana. Is Tucuman Still Burning? Buenos Aires. 1 (2006): 1-14. <http://radical.temp.si/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/tucuman-arde.pdf> Web. November 13, 2009.
Mosquera, Gerardo. Copying Eden: Recent Art from Chile. Chile: Puro Chile, 2006. <http://www.copiareleden.com/>. Web. October 9, 2009.
N/A. “The Disappeared.” North Dakota Museum of Art. 2005. <http://www.ndmoa.com/Exhibitions/PastEx/Disappeared/index.html>. Web. October 13, 2009.
Richard, Nelly. The Insubordination of Signs: Political Change, Cultural Transformation, and Poetics of the Crisis. United States: Duke University Press, 2004.
Richard, Nelly. To Baste The Senses, Tear the News, Fissure Power, Alert The Gaze. 2001. <http://www.visualartchile.cl/english/invited/2_richard.htm> Web. November 17, 2009.
Sullivan, Edward. Latin American Art in the Twentieth Century. London: Phaidon Press, 1996. Print.