Aparecidos (The Appeared)

Let me begin my story by briefly describing my art work, “Aparecidos.” Aparecidos is a memorial painting installation piece to remember the victims of Argentine state terrorism and genocide during the years 1976 -1983. During that time, a military junta had seized power from the former President, Isabela Peron, and proceeded to rule with a brutal crackdown on all political opposition, eventually killing up to 30000 citizens. This occurred with the full knowledge of the US government, and the direct support of then Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger.

The term “Desparecidos,” the Disappeared, was coined to describe the tactic of not merely arresting and killing people, but of the kidnapping, the denial that arrests had been made, and of the attempts, largely successful, to prevent discovery of the bodies following torture and executions. My title for this work, “Aparecidos,” the Appeared, intends to signify the symbolic reappearance of these individuals both by painting their portraits from photographs and by disseminating awareness of what occurred during this horrific administration’s years of control.

To date I have painted four hundred and fifty portraits from photo archives. Increasingly, as awareness of my project has grown in Argentina through my website and social networking, I have received direct requests from relatives and friends of the missing, who send photos of the disappeared. It is very powerful to interact one to one with people in this manner.

I have just returned from a trip to Argentina where I was able to stage two significant exhibitions of this work. The Museo de Memoria de Rosario, (Museum of Memory in Rosario) agreed to exhibit 40 of the portraits, all victims from the city of Rosario, a city of three million people. That Museum had been the former headquarters of the police, and police worked hand in hand with the military in these atrocities.

A second venue occurred at the iconic Monumento a la Bandera, the Monument of the Flag, an historic edifice similar to our Washington Monument, which stands opposite the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier across a huge terraced plaza. At this location, scores of tourists from all over Argentina, helped to install the 450 portraits into long frames, beneath the huge covered space of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  Then the carried the frames down the terraces to the base of this tower, the Monumento, installed them covering the steps that lead to the Monument and viewed them. A folkloric dance group performed traditional dances before the memorial but in silence…to respect the disappeared and to symbolically suggest the disappearance.  This was a powerful event.

In addition to the two exhibitions I was interviewed on two radio programs, one in Rosario and one, La Voz delos Colimbas , in Buenos Aires. Two articles went into papers. The people in both cities, Rosario and Buenos Aires, were deeply appreciative of this work. Many human rights organizations endorsed the exhibition at the Museo de Memoria and will be spreading word of the next exhibition of Aparecidos. I was amazed and humbled by the engagement of so many people, without whom none of this would have happened.

During the month of August, all 450 of the portraits will be on exhibition at Argentina’s largest human rights museum, exESMA. The museum is situated in what was originally a military college but which, during the years of the junta, had served as one of the most notorious of detention and torture facilities. Nearly 5000 people had been imprisoned and tortured at ESMA, and had subsequently been sent on the infamous “vuelos de muerte,”death flights, to be dropped, drugged and shackled into the river that leads to the sea.

This exhibition is particularly significant to me as it was during a private tour of ESMA in 2007, before it had been opened to the public, that I first committed to doing this project. Within the empty spaces of that structure, spaces that had been filled with hooded frightened people for so many years, spaces that had been permeated by the horror of the horrific conditions and torture, I resolved and made a personal promise to the disappeared that I would respond with an artwork, some sort of memorial, and would return, if possible, to exhibit this work in this city if not in this building. Consequently, the August exhibition is the fulfillment of a promise I made six years ago and I am amazed that I can fulfill it. I have an ongoing awareness that something much larger than I is at work in this entire project and that these exhibitions are only the beginning of the life and effect of this memorial.

My long-term plan is to find a permanent home for this work in Argentina, most likely in Buenos Aires. It is already huge and will be six times larger within the next five years as I add to the portraits. I will never finish the work…I am fifty eight…so I have no illusions regarding that goal. I do believe that there may be opportunities to set up a foundation eventually that would inspire and support other younger artists to do similar work, and that would be extremely satisfying to me.

They dynamic of state terrorism is ongoing. We see it in Syria, in Honduras and elsewhere.  In Latin America, under the auspices of Operation Condor, many countries were engaged in this task of political genocide and terrorism. Unfortunately, shamefully I will add, many US administrations helped to install and support the dictators who led these campaigns. My hope is that Aparecidos will do three things. First, I want to honor the lives of the people who were cut down in such merciless and brutal fashion. I want to talk about the sanctity of human life and of their individual lives. Secondly, I want to help to throw a light on this dynamic of repression, terrorism and genocide. Certainly the people in Latin America need no education on this…they lived it. However my experience as a North American has been that there is nearly no awareness of this among non-Hispanic United State’s citizens, and even less about the direct complicity of our various administrations, all of which is well documented and easily accessible. So education is the second goal I have in mind as I sincerely believe that most of our country men and women would be appalled had they known what was being conducted in the name of US foreign policy. Finally I hope the memorial and its education serves as a warning that what happened in Argentina can happen anywhere and is happening in many places. I hope that this will awaken people to the dynamic, will prompt them to investigate foreign policy further and that, once so enlightened, they will act out of moral principal to reject such policies.

Of all the questions I received while in Argentina and since I have begun this work, no question was asked more than the following: “Why does a North American care about what happened in Argentina?” Due to our history in Latin America, a history of gross exploitation for well over a century I am sorry to say, Latin Americans are amazed that North Americans might care about them. So I felt a bit like an ambassador in that regard.  I said that the birds and the monarch butterflies don’t recognize borders and neither do I. “Aparecidos,” as I explained in lectures and interviews, really is an appeal to everyone to “appear,” in the fullness of what we can be, as coequal, mutually respectful members of a single human and humane family.