Disappearing Into the Barrio, Searching For Answers

"Please be aware that this exhibition contains strong imagery and content," warns a sign outside the entrance to "The Disappeared" exhibit, on show at El Museo del Barrio until June 17. "The Disappeared" or "Los Desaparecidos" refers to those who were kidnapped, tortured, and killed by right-wing military dictatorships during the mid-to-late 20th century in Latin America. Given the deeply disturbing subject matter, it should come as no surprise that such an exhibit needs such a word of caution.

The exhibit gathers the work of 14 contemporary Latin American artists from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, Uruguay, and Venezuela. All of these artists lived through military dictatorships in their countries. Most had relatives or friends who disappeared, and some of the artists even worked in resistance movements themselves. The artists' visual media vary from simple photographs to complex installations, but each piece is sure to have an intensely emotional impact on the viewer.

Many of the artists have chosen to present images and names of the disappeared in their works. Antonio Frasconi's "In Memoriam" contains a painfully detailed description of torture surrounded by portraits of people who had presumably met the described fate. Marcel Brodsky, an Argentinean artist and human rights activist, annotated his eighth-grade class portrait to show which of his schoolmates had disappeared, been murdered, or forced into exile. A number of Argentinean artists collaborated to form "Identity," which contains hundreds of images of couples who submitted their photographs with hopes that their lost children may someday find them. This installation, which spans three rooms, overwhelms the viewer with the incomprehensible number of people affected by the military dictatorship in Argentina between 1976 and 1983.

While being confronted with these images, the museum director asks us "to question what role our own country played in supporting the Latin American governments which killed their own people as a matter of course." After World War Two, the United States provided economic and military support to military groups who overthrew democratically-elected left-wing leaders and replaced them with right-wing governments. These overtly or covertly U.S.-backed military dictatorships are responsible for many of the atrocities depicted in this exhibition. With this in mind, viewing the already distressing exhibit becomes all the more uncomfortable.

Among the most disturbing works on show is Arturo Duclos' memorial to the thousands who lost their lives or disappeared during Chile's period of state violence. The memorial is a Chilean flag-constructed with human bones. On another wall, Fernando Traverso takes a very different approach to remembering the vanished. "Urban Intervention in the City of Rosario, Argentina" is composed of hundreds of photographs of spray-painted bicycles on the city walls. After reading the caption, Traverso's memorial is no less chilling: the first evidence of someone's disappearance was often finding their abandoned bicycle, which was the common method of transportation used by resistance workers. Rather than using faces of the disappeared, Traverso-who himself was part of the resistance movement against the Argentinean military dictatorship-has used abandoned personal possessions to produce an equally haunting depiction of loss.

Possibly due to its impressive scope, the exhibit fails to inform the viewer of any historical details about the various military dictatorships. No detailed information is provided about the rise and fall of these regimes, let alone any adequate descriptions of the specific dictatorships themselves. El Museo del Barrio's mission is to raise public awareness and foster education about Latin American subjects through art. Unfortunately, this exhibit fails to meet the museum's praiseworthy goals. Expect to leave deeply moved, relatively uninformed, and very motivated to take a contemporary Latin American history class.