Darkness Visible: The Long Shadow of Dictatorship

The exhibition, developed by the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires for Spazio Punch, takes place in the year of the 50th anniversary of the coup d’état that ushered in Argentina’s last military dictatorship – a regime that implemented a systematic policy of censorship, torture, murder and forced disappearance.

With eighteen artists and collectives, the exhibition claims the museum space as a civic platform. It positions art as a vehicle for the understanding of history, the protection of memory and human rights, the engagement of activism against state terror, and as a means to raise civic awareness in the face of violence. The exhibition includes works by major contemporary artists who responded to this historic moment with alarm, condemnation or criticism.

The words ‘Darkness Visible’ are taken from the description of Hell in John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” (1667). The oxymoron serves as an apt metaphor for the role of the visual arts in bringing to light what has been hidden or censored and yet remains unbearable: the continued presence of the disappeared as a symbol of Argentina’s last dictatorship.

Artists: Marta Minujín, León Ferrari, Guillermo Kuitca, Luis Camnitzer, Luis Pazos, Aldo Sessa, Marcelo Brodsky, Eduardo Gil, Ana Gallardo, Nicanor Aráoz, Flavia Da Rin, Eduardo Basualdo, Liliana Maresca, Sergio De Loof, Organización Negra, Archivo de la Memoria Trans, Gianni Mestichelli