Necroarchivos de las Americas: An Unrelenting Search for Justice is a group exhibition on display at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon in Eugene. The exhibition features art that examines political violence. We learn more about the exhibit and the artists behind the work from Adriana Miramontes Olivas, curator of academic programs and Latin American and Caribbean art at the museum.
This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. We start today with a new exhibit that’s up right now at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon. It’s called Necroarchivos de las Americas: An Unrelenting Search for Justice. It features the works of 16 artists from throughout Latin America in installations and video and interactive art. The show explores creative responses to repressive and sometimes murderous regimes. Adriana Miramontes Olivas curated the exhibition. She is a curator of academic programs and Latin American and Caribbean art at the museum and she joins us now. It’s great to have you on the show.
Adriana Miramontes Olivas: Good afternoon, Dave. It’s great to be here. Thank you so much for this opportunity to share.
Miller: I want to start with the name of the exhibit, a word that I understand you coined. What does Necroarchivos mean?
Miramontes Olivas: Necroarchivos is Spanish, and it’s a reference to, or a response, I should say – it’s informed by a philosopher from Cameroon, Achille Mbembe. He coined the term “necropolitics.” And in summary, what necropolitics means is in this moment, when the authority, what he calls a sovereign power, dictates who must live and who must die. Necroarchivos is informed by this term Necropolitics, but it’s a mix that includes archives – the archivos – and this is a reference to those governments which in our communities, archives go missing, information is displaced, it becomes inaccessible, is tampered with, is destroyed.
It’s emphasizing this need for … in order for us to be just to each other and to have equity and inclusion, we have to have that information to support members of the community. So Necroarchivos is, going back to the title, part of this ongoing demand for justice.
Miller: The artists in the exhibition, they come from a really wide variety of countries – Colombia, Uruguay, Mexico, Guatemala, Chile, Puerto Rico, the U.S., others. What unifies their work?
Miramontes Olivas: That’s a great question, because some of these artists have been working for a very long time in the art world. We have artists who were born in 1937, but then we have artists who were born more recently, in the 1990′s. So the activities inspired by this ongoing response to state violence, and state violence can take many different forms. We’ve seen it through police brutality, for example. There’s also authoritarian regimes, disappearances, gender violence, or what is also known as feminicidios, or femicides. There’s also racism. All of these artists have devoted their careers to asking for justice and denouncing some of these issues.
For many of these artists, this search for justice comes because they have lived these experiences firsthand. So many of their artworks communicate these topics in different forms. Something about the exhibit is that there are jury cases, there’s archives from the CIA, we also have mirrors, prints, knives, boxes, ribbons, video art, software. They all employ different techniques. Again, they’re different generations and also different countries. So sometimes working with what is available or sometimes working against censorship. But what unites them is this ongoing search for justice.
Part of that title also refers to community members. Many of the mothers of the disappeared. For example, we can talk about Argentina or Mexico, more recently, or Native American women who we hear about who disappeared because of loved ones … again, because the state [refuses] to share that something is happening, or neglects the victims, or hides the information.
Miller: Let’s turn to some of the specific work, starting with something made more than 50 years ago by the German-born Uruguayan artist Luis Camnitzer. Who is he?
Miramontes Olivas: Camnitzer and his family escaped the Nazi regime in the late 1930′s, and they moved to Uruguay. After a while in Uruguay, they decided to move to the United States. In Uruguay, there was a president, democratically elected, Juan María Bordaberry, and in 1973, he decided to dissolve Congress. At the time, unions were banned, political parties were prohibited, freedom of press was also eliminated. And this was also an economic struggle. There was the privatization of numerous industries. So with Juan María Bordaberry, we have this president that becomes a dictator and this dictatorial regime will last until the 1980′s. About 200 people were killed and 192 disappeared. This caused the exile of many Uruguayans.
Luis Camnitzer, with his family living in New York, created a piece called Leftovers. Leftovers was originally presented in 1970. It included more than 200 boxes. These boxes are wrapped in basically surgical bandages, and they are coined with the term “LEFTOVERS” – all in capitals. And they also have Roman numerals. Originally 200 were exhibited. Several have been lost. Today, the Tate Museum in London has part of the collection. The other half belongs to Yeshiva University Museum in New York. And that’s the artwork that we are exhibiting here, which includes 80 boxes.
Miller: And it’s worth saying, it’s not just surgical gauze, there is what looks like blood seeping out of them and seeping onto the floor as well.
Miramontes Olivas: Yeah, they have been stained with red pigments. And so the boxes – leftovers – viewers are invited to think about what those leftovers are. So when we take into consideration the context that risk coming here was escaping from, well, you can imagine what they have inside. Something that is beautiful about the artwork is that they have aged over time. So now, what originally looked like wide, clean, hospital bandage, is now yellowish. It has dark stains.
They show us that memory, that history of an issue that is ongoing. That’s something that ties all of these artists. We’re still struggling against militarization, against political leaders seeking absolute power. In Uruguay, we had this regime backed by the CIA, just like in Guatemala and many other countries. So the exhibit and the artwork also talk about U.S. intervention in other countries.
Miller: I want to turn to a piece that’s not going to be up until late August and then will be through the end of the run, through December. Can you describe Doris Salcedo’s gallery-sized installation Plegaria Muda, which I understand translates as “silent plea,” or “silent prayer.”
Miramontes Olivas: Yeah, absolutely. Doris Salcedo is another internationally recognized artist, and she, too, has devoted her career to discuss violence against bodies. In this piece that we’re bringing to the museum – this is part of the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art – are pairs of tables. It’s an installation informed by a sculpture. In this installation, we have 60 pairs of tables. The tables are quite long. They are about six feet long and they have mud in between them. That’s right, mud, soil. And eventually, throughout the exhibition, there will be grass coming out of the tables. So the idea is that …
Well, first, let me go back a few thoughts and explain that Doris Salcedo was inspired to talk about violence in Los Angeles. And she’s denouncing gun violence. So she interviewed mothers who have children – sons, daughters – who have been murdered because of gun violence. So it’s informed by Los Angeles, but it’s also informed by her own experiences living and working in Colombia, in Bogotá more specifically. The grass will come through the wood and eventually show us that life prevails. The tables, they create a labyrinth. It’s a whole gallery dedicated to this one artwork.
It’s like a labyrinth and the audience has to go through it, almost like if you were at a cemetery. So you’re surrounded by tombs in a way. But again, all the tables are unique, so they represent our individuality. Yet, at the end of the day, they are all tables. In other words, showing our common humanity, and that it’s very hard to have grass growing in a gallery. This is a controlled environment, there’s no natural sunlight. So that’s part of the challenge. But again, it shows how life, at the end of the day, prevails. There’s this resistance that the exhibit is trying to show with our works like this.
Miller: Can you describe what the Colombian artist Oscar Muñoz did with his piece, Aliento, which I understand translates as “breath,” and what he’s asking or inviting gallery exhibitgoers to do?
Miramontes Olivas: Yeah, this is a very interesting piece because it requires viewer participation. His artwork, Breath, or Aliento, is a series of mirrors. First of all, he was collecting images from the obituary section of newspapers in Colombia, and this is a piece he created first in 1995. Viewers are asked to get close to the mirrors and to breathe on them. Now, after we’ve seen the COVID pandemic, and we were wearing masks all the time, so this is a challenge to have an artwork like this on view. But viewers are invited to breathe on them and eventually they’ll see those images.
Now, some images appear more blurry than others. For some, it’s just a brief outline. For others, there’s more facial features that you can recognize. You will be able to distinguish some clothes, even for some of the images. The idea is, he trained as a photographer, and so he’s playing with this idea of memory, absence, presence, visibility, invisibility. He shows our desire to capture, to hold on, either to a loved one or to the image itself. But yet our failure, even photographs tend to fade away, right? So that’s what the artwork is telling us.
He’s very much interested in this idea of presence, absence, and also working within the Colombian context, the violence that is inflicted upon bodies. He has made it very clear that these are universal topics and we can all relate to them.
Miller: In the catalog for the exhibition, it says that the art “calls attention to hidden histories, unwritten accounts, marginalized voices and lost files, and that it seeks to render visible what has been declared invisible.” And we could hear that in what you were just talking about with the breathing example.
I can imagine some journalists, though, saying that they aim to do very similar things to that quote I just read. What do you see as a difference between the art you’re interested in and journalism?
Miramontes Olivas: Great question. Well, the artist approaches with an aesthetic object, and it might communicate on those topics. But also, more than that, art is informed by our own experiences. The reader, the viewer’s background. So that’s part of it.
The other thing is that, in the gallery, there is this space for reflection, for collective engagement and community-building, solidarity. So when you’re at the museum there’s this opportunity to talk to others, to engage in conversation, and the exchange of ideas here. They’re also responding to our historical questions.
It’s not very common to find mirrors in a gallery. You can find painted mirrors in an artwork but not the actual mirror as a work of art in this case. So the artists are in dialogue with their peers and with the past, as well, with other artists and art historians. I think that’s part of the richness of art. It can communicate on multiple levels. Even if you don’t know any of the issues that they are trying to communicate on, there will be this memory of the interaction with Breath, in this case.
Miller: What does it mean to you to be putting this show up in the U.S. now, at this particular political moment?
Miramontes Olivas: Well, at this particular moment, we take for granted our rights, but we are not immune to dictatorial regimes, to authoritarian governments. So it’s an invitation to engage – whether it’s here in the United States, in Mexico, in Venezuela, in other countries – with the political life of the country to participate, to vote. We are accustomed to being able to speak and enjoy freedom of expression. For example, you were talking about journalism.
But it cannot be taken for granted. The state of deception and militarization, these are harsh regimes, and they don’t allow any tolerance. Opposition leaders are targeted, they’re silenced, they’re in prison, they’re tortured, they disappear. And so it’s a call for action.
Miller: Adriana Miramontes Olivas, thanks very much.
Miramontes Olivas: Thank you.
Miller: Adriana Miramontes Olivas is the curator of the Necroarchivos exhibit that’s up right now through December at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art in Eugene.
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