Visual Arts Library
The touch reclaimed spent tenderness (From the Uruguayan Torture Series)
Artist: Luis Camnitzer
Date:
1983 - 1984
Medium: photoetching on paper
Dimensions: n.a.
Event: Latin American Repression
Motif:
Violence
In his works, Luis Camnitzer often addresses issues of political repression in relation to questions of memory, identity, and the passage of time. In this series of photo-etchings, Camnitzer brings human rights violations to light. The artist states, "I have been led to the conclusion that History is the making of a self-portrait and that the more one tries to camouflage that, the further one gets from the authentic portrayal of history's subjects." Camnitzer explores the relationship between words and images by pairing photographs that hint at human torture with simple, one-line phrases. Though seemingly unrelated to the images, the phrases manage only to intensify the underlying message of his works. As described by curator Robert Browning in a catalog essay about the works, "Through a diary-like narrative of image and text, we are drawn into the world of the torturer and his victim. It is a world of pain-not just the immediate and excruciating physical pain of the torturer's implements, but the merciless psychological pain that ends only when the victim is stripped of all individuality-when his persona has become no more than a reflection of his torturer." Artist's Statement I think that the work happens in the viewer, not in the art object. The object works like a window or a runner that communicates between the artist and the viewer. I want an artwork to act like a grenade. The "artistic" part is a caramel that surrounds the explosive.
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