Artist Statement:
Reconstruction of the portrait of Pablo Míguez is a public artwork permanently displayed at Parque de la Memoria, a memorial that commemorates the lives and ideas of social transformation of those kidnapped, tortured and killed during the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina in the late 70s. This memorial is situated by Río de la Plata, the river in which the perpetrators dumped unconscious prisoners from military planes, during what they used to call “death flights”. Reconstruction of the portrait of Pablo Míguez sits on the waters of said river. According to the dictators’s perverse discourse, the “disappeared” were neither alive nor dead, but their existence had “simply” ceased. Following this logic, when kidnapping people the military would steal pictures, documents, and evidence of any kind that could prove the kidnapped person’s existence. Being a visual artist, I proposed to attempt the reconstruction of one of the multiple possible portraits of Pablo Míguez, one of approximately 500 children kidnapped with his/her parents during the military dictatorship. This attempt at reconstructing an image was done through exercising collective memory building. Pablo’s relatives, friends, and 13-year-old children took part in the said process. The resulting artwork was installed in front of the lookout where the Monument to the Victims of State Terrorism ends, its back to the spectator, so that he/she has to activate the memory of his/her own “desaparecidos” in order to reconstruct his face. The sculpture’s polished surface reflects its surroundings and makes the image more or less visible in the landscape depending on the weather conditions and the moment of the day