The danger of banalizing past state violence and forgetting its tangible, visceral realness is one that exists throughout the Southern Cone of Latin America. In an effort to revive the memory of Brazil’s military dictatorship, it is useful to look to neighboring countries and share experiences and methods for communicating collective trauma. Here, Artememoria shares Argentinian artist Mado Reznik‘s installation series entitled “30000”. Here, Reznik meditates on the statistic 30,000: the symbol of the number of people disappeared because of state violence during the last civil-military dictatorship in Argentina. The number includes the 500 kidnapped children and the 5 fetuses found in the wombs of mothers who were kidnapped and killed.
Using allegorical forms, the artist focuses on making the gravity of this number felt. She does not need to address the justifications and explanations espoused by those who negate these events — instead, she focuses on the violence itself. One can find interesting parallels when comparing this body of work to the exhibition “Hiatus: Memory of Dictatorship Violence in Latin America”, exhibited in São Paulo’s Memorial da Resistência and featured in Issue 1 of Artememoria.
30000 Nuditos (30000 Little Nodes). Mado Reznik.
An installation made up of 30,000 little nodes that the artist made by hand. She used skeins of wick thread (the kind used in oil lamps), which she cut and knotted over the course of several months. Image used with permission from the artist.
30000 Nuditos (30000 Little Nodes). Mado Reznik.
Image used with permission from the artist.
30000 Nuditos (30000 Little Nodes). Mado Reznik.
There are five cubes, each containing 6,000 nodes. One cube simply contains the number “30,000”. This threatening emptiness warns of possible futures in which something similar could happen again should forgetting triumph. Image used with permission from the artist.
30000 Nuditos (30000 Little Nodes). Mado Reznik.
A band along the side of the cubes is also made of the transparent acrylic material, allowing the viewer to look inside and see the contents. The full set of cubes is held in two bins, which are tied together with red ribbon. The work is meant to be exhibited closed, or with the nudes loose in a room. Image used with permission from the artist.
La voz de los niños (The Voice of Children). Mado Reznik.
In this work, the artist uses the cover of children’s books from the 1930s. Image used with permission from the artist.
La voz de los niños (The Voice of Children). Mado Reznik.
On the back of the cover page, there is a stamp approving censorship by the Spanish church. Image used with permission from the artist.
La voz de los niños (The Voice of Children). Mado Reznik.
The interior contains a box that contains 500 little nodes, covered by an acrylic sheet. Embossed below is the same number. Image used with permission from the artist.
30000. Mado Reznik.
This work is an art book with inside pages that contain 30,000 holes. Image used with permission from the artist.
30000. Mado Reznik.
The same number is printed on the cover. On the inside back cover there is an envelope that contains a folded sheet of paper with more holes – an allegory of that which is uncountable. Image used with permission from the artist.
Cinco (Five). Mado Reznik.
This work takes the form of a large envelope that resembles those used in any bureaucratic office. Image used with permission from the artist.
Cinco (Five). Mado Reznik.
Inside, there is a large sheet of paper with 5 tea bags attached. In each bag there are nodes soaked in encaustic red paint. Under each tea bag there are the numbers one through five. This represents the five fetuses that the Forensic Anthropology Team identified in the bodies of pregnant women who had been killed by the dictatorship’s repressive forces. Image used with permission from the artist.
Mado Reznik is a visual artist and poet who was born in the city of Buenos Aires in 1955. She received her B.A. in Letters from the University of Buenos Aires and her P.h.D in the same field from the Complutense University of Madrid (Spain). Meanwhile, she continued her education in visual art through workshops in various different mediums. After a career as a researcher and professor in the field of Linguistics in Argentina, Reznik opted to explore questions of memory and language through art and literary language. She began to develop her own conceptual and visual path through one of the mediums she was most drawn to: paper. The core of the analogy lies in how memory resembles paper: the same fibers that make up the material also give it its form and make it fragile. This is the feature that ties her artwork to the texts she writes (poetry, nonfiction testimony, and fiction). She has participated in Mail Art as a method of producing beyond market circles. Her other works have been exhibited in Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, the United States, Canada, Spain, and Russia. Some of the artist’s books are part of the Hass Arts Special Collection at the Yale University Archive and others are available at the Environmental Library at the University of California at Berkeley. Currently, she facilitates workshops and develops her artistic and literary production. Her other visual and literary works can be found on her website, www.madoreznik.com.