Visual Arts Library
It was the End of the Afternoon II
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Artist: Ana Tiscornia
Date:
1999
Medium: Digital Photography, text, and assemblage
Dimensions: Various
Event: Latin American Repression
Motif:
Remembrance
Fading Memory
Uruguayan artist Ana Tiscornia has lived in New York since 1991. The installation for her work, "It Was The End of the Afternoon II," consists of digital images showing railway fragments. These images hardly vary, the regarded pieces belong to railway junctions. They are jointly re-assembled into a possible railway along the sequenced stations. On these stations, or the railway assemblages, a repeated text written in small type often appears, as well as traces of many diverse objects ranging from every day elements to piles of cut out, wrapped paper sketches. The text is a brief paragraph from a survivor's interview. The victim woke up floating in a river after being tortured and tossed out, presumed to be dead. The text becomes part of the installation without reference to its original context or sources. --Irma Arestizabal Artist's Statement The events that inspired 'It was The End of the Afternoon II' took place during Augusto Pinochet's military regime in Chile. It could have happened in any country, like mine, that is Uruguay. This may occur whenever memory is banned. The remarkable point in my installation shows the depriving of history: oblivion. I do not intend to tell a story or to send information. I'd rather introduce a poetic and also ambiguous set-up so as to force the viewer to speculate on, almost float over his oblivion or even a possible fiction. At the same time, although it arose from a political incident, the oblivion allows for philosophical implications closely linked to my own interests shown in this installation. The large scale suits several views; the trainway can be regarded as a huge sketch or as if being deconstructed in great detail into an intimate close-up.
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