Silvia Levenson: Identidad desaparecida

The title of the exhibition, “Identidad desaparecida”, alludes to the void left by thousands of children, now adults, who were torn from their biological families in Argentina. An absence that overshadows the history of Argentina from the time the military and their civilian accomplices – doctors, priests and officials – attempted to eliminate not only a generation, but also their descendants. The mothers who gathered every Thursday in front of the government headquarters in the Plaza de Mayo to demand the release of their lost children or the return of their bodies did not give up. These same women, now grandmothers, have shifted the focus of their protest to their desaparecidos grandchildren and begun a new search.

The exhibition’s central installation of 119 items of infant clothing in coloured glass recalls the cases solved through the efforts of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo: one hundred and nineteen children who have been able to discover the names of their real parents, learn the circumstances of their birth, and meet their biological families.