Artist Lecture 2: Dr. Andrea Giunta

“The Politics of Representation: Art and Human Rights in Latin America”

Dr. Giunta is an art historian and she talked about artists and exhibitions that deal with missing persons and the search for family members who have disappeared. She explained how this is a social problem and it is very personal for the victims, the family left behind, and that the people at fault have not been punished. Pictures in the newspaper are like memorials of the missing because they remind people of the event. The missing is a popular theme in Latin American art.

In one exhibition she described, pictures of the faces of the missing were displayed. They reached a different audience than the newspapers. The pictures in the paper were seen by others around the time of the disappearance, but the exhibition was seen by the next generation, possibly the children of the missing. In fact, three young people found picture of their parents and therefore reestablished their identities. They were no longer just children without parents, but had found out who their parents are.

Artist Gustavo Germano retook the family photographs that appeared in missing persons ads in the newspapers. He placed the family members in the same positions and left a space where the missing person was, marking their absence. This forced the families to relive the original photograph, but without their loved one. The absence in the picture represents the absence in their lives and reliving it may be like losing the person again. Dr. Giunta showed the two pictures side by side and it had a powerful effect. In the original, the missing person is still there and alive. When I see a missing person sign, I think it is sad, but I do not consider that he or she is gone forever. There is still hope when you can see them. Germano’s pictures show the reality that the person may be gone forever.

Another work of art involved many people working together to remember the missing. People dressed in black and stood in a tracing of the face of a missing person. The movement and life of the living bodies “granted new life” to the missing people, who may never be found. This action symbolically brought back the missing. They are alive in the memories of the living bodies and this memory is physically manifested in the form of the missing person’s face. In addition to remembering the missing, Dr. Giunta points out, that the art and monuments also call for the trial and punishment of the people responsible.