Feeling the Past: Display and the Art of Memory in Latin America

ANDREA GIUNTA (AUTOR)

Journal of Curatorial Studies

Intellect

Lugar: Bristol; Año: 2014 vol. 3 p. 321 - 345

2045-5836

Memory is a compelling and recurring topic in contemporary art. This articleexamines the mechanisms through which Latin American exhibitions and artists?urban interventions have addressed the violent and traumatic pasts suffered underdecades of dictatorships. The representations of these brutal pasts are activatedthrough images and museographic devices that involve not only the architecture ofmuseums and other sites of memory, but also the choreography and experience ofthe visitor. I argue that even such formal and abstract structures bear an underlyingpurpose and politics, which is to produce an emotional contact with the past. Byanalyzing display sites and artworks dealing with trauma, this article problematizesthe relationship between space, memory and history.