The exhibit was put on by MNBA which made me laugh as I thought of the credit card bank, Maryland National Bank Association but around here means Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes.
The Artistic Union was founded in 1880, the oldest South America organization devoted to exhibiting paintings. It got it’s current home in 1910 and it looks like a building you might see in Paris.
There is restoration work underway inside and how it’s funded I don’t know as admission is free.
Among the sculptures I noticed balled up pieces of paper and it took me a while to unravel what was going on.
It turns out a 28 year old artist from Argentina had created this exhibit in 1969 before the dictatorship and has only now been reproduced.
Basically she wanted to mess with the formal sculptures she used paper to create contrast and surprise.
I found a photo of Liliana Porter online and her biography says she is Argentine and was born in Buenos Aires in 1941. She’s had an impressive career and now lives in New York City.
She also created this rather odd piece of wall art which got even odder when you got up close.
I found it quite mind bending as she made a collage of photographs of pieces of paper she had crumpled up then made collages of the photos and then photographed that to create the final result.
And then there was what appears to be the inevitable discussion of the dictatorship in this the 51st anniversary of Pinochet’s coup.
That means mass grave on the walls are written names of soldiers and the number of rounds fired.
In the basement we found political art, colors and uses of protest.
A political platform allowing the public…
…to get a feel for standing on a platform of power over the people. It turns out if you are 5 foot five inches tall you don’t get to see or be seen too much.
This was an anti war exhibit made of airplane aluminum. Police set fire to it and this is all that remains:
And then back out into the sunshine and chaos of traffic and life and color.
United in glory and in death.
