Forbidden to Forget is an international exhibition bringing together the research of seven artists from Mexico, Chile, and Colombia, aiming to address common themes among Latin American peoples: armed conflict, drug trafficking, the exploitation of natural resources by multinational corporations, political imbalance, and social inequality, among others. These become generators of injustice rooted in political, military, social, and economic interests, which have resulted in a wave of violence that, over several centuries and especially throughout the twentieth century, has become a constant, contaminating agent of terror for the citizenry.
If you don't use your head, someone else will use it for you.
Rubén Blades
Forbidden to Forget is an international exhibition bringing together the research of seven artists from Mexico, Chile, and Colombia, aiming to address common themes among Latin American peoples: armed conflict, drug trafficking, the exploitation of natural resources by multinational corporations, political imbalance, and social inequality, among others. These become generators of injustice rooted in political, military, social, and economic interests, which have resulted in a wave of violence that, over several centuries and especially throughout the twentieth century, has become a constant, contaminating agent of terror for the citizenry.
Bringing together this artistic research seeks to raise awareness of the different situations each of these countries experiences in relation to conflict. Here we might well ask why does Latin America seem to be a territory hopelessly trapped by a seemingly eternal conflict?
Indeed, this exhibition includes a work composed of three knives arranged in a triangle bearing the words: search, destiny, and life, referring to domestic violence and, at the same time, to the everyday use we give these objects.
Likewise, replicas of nine-millimetre weapons serve to play back audio recordings of shootouts and clashes between cartels and police in Mexico, recorded by the community, who become both witnesses to and accusers of these events.
Interacting with the exhibition can become an exercise in catharsis for the visitor, who has the chance to set down their own life story through drawings and writings, which enriches the artist's work by capturing different readings of the same conflictive events – events that come with differing versions of what happened, and which the elites and media, holding a certain degree of social and political power, are generally the ones responsible for presenting to society as a manipulated version of events.
In addition, a series of screen prints made in chocolate presents images of African children who are part of the cocoa-growing workforce, monopolised by multinational corporations that exploit natural and human resources in Africa and Latin America.
In this same vein, these accounts become testimonies, and thus the oral history of Afro-descendant peoples in Colombia can be understood through the concept of oraliture developed by the African historian Yoro Fall, which groups together legends, myths, tales, songs, dances, and rites. It therefore gathers the entire teaching, memory, and transmission of knowledge, in order to preserve and remember their history, culture, religious experiences, forms of social organisation, among others. But when violence, massacres, and barbarity penetrate their communities, their history begins to be cut off at the root and erased. With this in mind, two works are presented showing how these populations in the departments of Chocó and Cauca are victims of human rights violations, where massacres such as the one in Naya (Cauca) in 2001 sowed terror at the hands of paramilitaries, guerrillas, and the army, becoming one of the bloodiest in the history of the department of Cauca.
The exhibition also features caricature, lending a touch of dark humour to the everyday events affecting the Colombian population.
Forbidden to Forget is an invitation to awaken, to keep our history alive and relevant, to avoid repeating the same mistakes, to find the equality of a society that has somehow been lost, and, most importantly, to fight for dignity and the right to live freely.
The exhibition opens on Saturday, February 6, at 2:00 p.m. and will remain open until March 3, 2016.
Juan David Quintero
Curator