Distinct Chatter from April 8 to May 20, 2022 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Fiona Yang
En Sonido is easily the most striking piece in Distinct Chatter. Created by Argentinian-American artist Mercedes, En Sonido — translating to Sound Loop — is a metal basin that sits in the back of the gallery. Printed on the floor of the basin is a picture and accompanying biography of Jaime Jose Colmenares Berrios, an artist and photographer who disappeared into the Rio de la Plata during Argentina’s infamous “death flights” in the 1970s. A thin sheen of water fills the basin. Viewers are encouraged to move a pair of hydrocontact microphones around the floor of the basin to “find the heartbeat of the image.” When the “heartbeat” is found, the basin vibrates, creating unexpectedly beautiful patterns in the water and sending tremors through the hands of the viewer.
With En Sonido, Mercedes invokes a brutal history: a period of state terror and political repression across South America called Operation Condor, during which hundreds of thousands of people were kidnapped, tortured, and killed. She is one in a long line of artists trying to contextualize and memorialize “the disappeared.” This tradition is brilliantly examined in the catalogue for the North Dakota Museum of Art’s exhibition Los Desaparecidos (The Disappeared), which appears in the gallery’s pop-up library next to En Sonido. In the book, curator Laurel Reuter draws comparisons within a collection of works from artists in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay, all centered around the disappeared. En Sonido must be analyzed within this context. Among the work of her peers, the thematic similarities in Mercedes’ piece are thrown into sharp relief.
In the introduction to the catalogue, Lawrence Weschler notes in particular the use of faces, especially those of the victims. He quotes the essay “The Face” by Jean-Paul Sartre: “A bit of the future has now entered the room: a mist of futurity surrounds the face: its future.” In contrast to Sartre’s future-centered interpretation of the face, he writes, “For time and again in this show, we are being confronted with a squandered and truncated gaze, a forward looking, future-tending gaze that has nevertheless been interrupted, cut short, cruelly severed… It becomes up to us to reach out, to gaze back, to fulfill and redeem that haunted gaze.” Indeed, many works in Los Desaparecidos feature faces — to memorialize a loved one, to overwhelm with the sheer number of victims, to provoke recognition.
En Sonido features a stark, large-scale, black-and-white photograph of Berrios that stares up at the viewer from the bottom of the basin, underneath the rippling water. His expression is inscrutable, allowing viewers to interpret as they wish: depending on who’s looking, he could be seeking recognition, acknowledgement, or justice. Literally interpreted, the symbolism becomes morbid. The viewer, in searching for the “heartbeat” of the image, essentially plunges their hands into the Rio de la Plata to find Berrios himself. A parallel can be drawn to the installation piece 30,000 by Nicolás Guagnini. The sculpture is a fragmented black-and-white photo of the artist’s father, which appears and disappears as the viewer moves around it. The viewer, with both pieces, bears the responsibility of searching for and bringing the victim back to life — visually with 30,000, and tactilely with En Sonido. In both pieces, the victim gazes back.
Touch and tactility — brought to the forefront of the viewer’s awareness through the hydrocontact microphones and vibrations — also serves to ground viewers firmly in the present moment, in reality. As some viewers discover right away, placing the microphones on the right spot creates a loud, disruptive tremor. That jolt incentivizes viewers to slow down, move the microphones more slowly, and pay attention to smaller vibrations. Attention and care, in the context of this work’s history, are valuable currencies. In her artist statement, Mercedes writes, “The artist reflects on an ongoing violent, unacknowledged history that the post-memory generation must keep alive.” The greatest enemy for Mercedes, and indeed many of the artists in the Los Desaparecidos collection, is a lack of awareness, a lack of attention. Similarly, in Oscar Muñoz’s Aliento (Breath), the viewer must come close enough to breathe on a steel disc, engraved with the face of a dead person, for the face to become visible. Reuter writes, “The viewer’s breath brings life. Only through paying very close attention can one both see and know. Only then can the numbness be defeated.”
The overall effect of En Sonido is haunting, almost ghostly. Even after the viewer puts down the microphones, the vibrations linger on. The water clings to their hands. It’s hard to forget Berrios’ piercing eyes. Mercedes has done the one thing she set out to achieve: keeping the memory of Berrios, and the disappeared, alive. As the water stills and history moves on, it falls to artists to make sense of what’s left behind, and as a result of Mercedes’ work — and countless others by her peers — we live with the dead in our public consciousness, at least for a little longer.
Mercedes’ work is included in Distinct Chatter at the Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from April 8, 2022 to May 20, 2022.
Further Reading
Los Desaparecidos, edited by Laurel Reuter
Operation Condor (The Guardian)