Works Memory

My gratitude to : the families of Bleier, Castro and Blanco. To the National Institute of Human Rights. To the Honorary Commission of Sites for Memory. To the forensic investigation team. To the Human Rights Prosecutor's Office. To Luis Aldabe and Zenia Toribio. To Emilio Toribio and Olira Viñas, in my memory and heart forever. Work exhibited at the EAC from 10 December 2020 in the 59th National Visual Arts Salon.

Work selected for the Salón Nacional de Artes Visuales 2020.

Handcrafted photography on wood, made without a camera, with the old cyanotype technique, intervened with oil.

The spiral is formed by direct contact between the lands of the three graves of missing victims of State terrorism: Eduardo Bleier Horovitz , Julio Castro and Ricardo Blanco. These are the lands of the sites where her bone remains were found during anthropological excavations, given to the artist by the Human Rights Institution of Uruguay.

Butia Palm (Butia capitata), Anacaguita (Cordia boissieri), Chilca (Baccharis latifolia), Plumerillo ( Calliandra tweediei), Mburucuya (Passiflora caerulea), Canelón (Myrsine laetevirens), Cow's hoof (Bauhinia forficata), Ceibo flowers (Erythrina crista-galli), old man's beard (Tillandsia usneoides), Yucca (yucca elephantipes), Viznaga ( Ammi visnaga L.). 

Blue Planet Blue Planet is the name of the garden that I plant in the Museum of Memory in Montevideo, a site specific, an artistic laboratory in a place of memory, a garden that is proposed as a space for active contemplation, where we can sit and watch, plant, feel the embrace of the flowers that they could not cut.

Each plant that is integrated is a collective performative act, each one contains a land of those lands, which are an archive. Relatives of victims, human rights defenders, girls and boys from schools and the neighborhood, bring their plant, perform their ritual. I take care of each plant, I make a herbarium. With those flowers, leaves, earth, I create images by direct contact between the photographic emulsion and the botanical objects, creating traces.

Usando una de las primeras técnicas fotográficas, la cianotipia, sin cámara y por contacto directo, creo huellas de las tierras y su jardín. La cianotipia es una técnica del 1840, muy usada para la copia de planos en arquitectura e ingeniería, elijo esta técnica porque propongo la memoria como cimiento de nuestra sociedad. Las líneas generadas por los dibujos de luz de esas huellas botánicas se imponen con su belleza ante el olvido, esas líneas de la memoria cuyo origen son los tallos de las plantas crecidas en el jardín, sostienen nuestras libertades.

In Uruguay, this is the first space in homage to our found disappeared, remembering them planting flowers with the land of the excavations is to plant a future. They are proof of clandestine burials, this land kept them hidden but also spoke, and may still have a lot to say and it is necessary to ask them, with all possible languages. Although art does not ridicule through aesthetic experience, remembering is a vital action, as is planting.