/dis/appear: stories of images, ghosts and mirrors

Abstract

Taking as a guide the installation Identidad, exhibited in Buenos Aires in 1998, we will reflect on images as ghosts in permanent appearance and disappearance. The installation, conceived by Centro Cultural Recoleta in partnership with Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, was one of the strategies to bring to light an obscure event of the dictatorial era: the abduction of children of the missing persons. Between portraits and mirrors, we see the appearance and disappearance of bodies – present, absent, expected bodies. The mirror holds the latent possibility of reflecting the face of the lost son, as well as our own face, as if each spectator could be, himself, what we are looking for. If the old portraits tell us the past, the mirror evokes the present – our present body – and the moral duty of never forgetting.