The Disappeared (Los Desaparecidos) exposition

After last class’s conversation, I was thinking about projects that use alternative media in Latin America as a response to either repressive regimes, or need for revolutions. I was reminded to this exposition I went to at the el Museo del Barrio (http://www.elmuseo.org/) called The Disappeared (Los Desaparecidos) (http://www.ndmoa.com/PastEx/Disappeared/index.html). This exposition showed “art” made by people in Latin America as a response to repressive right-wing military dictatorships during the late-1950s to the 1980s.

One of the “artists” I really liked was a Brazilian named Cildo Meireles who would write messages such as “Yankee go home” on money and then put it back into circulation. He would also silk-screen similar messages on to glass Coca-Cola bottles he would then return to the company to be refilled. What was later labeled art was used at the time to promote alternative, leftist ideas he would not be able to promote otherwise during the dictatorship in Brazil during the 1970s.

Another artists I really liked, Fernando Traverso, used the image of bicycles to protest the regime. During this period it was common for members of the resistance to use a bicycle as a form of transportation. Abandoned bicycles soon became symbolic of people who had been kidnapped and, thus, “disappeared”. In order to protest against the regime, Traverso painted the same number of bicycles throughout the city of Rosario as the number of people deemed to have disappeared in the city during the dictatorship. These permanent shadows of bicycles were a way for Traverso to pay homage to his disappeared colleagues.

Though this exhibition was clearly labeling these attempts of resistance as art, at the time of the dictatorships I think these were very creative forms of alternative media.

Juliana