The word “disappeared” was redefined during the mid-20^th century in Latin America. “Disappear” evolved into a noun used to identify people who were kidnapped, tortured and killed by their own governments in the latter decades of the twentieth century in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay and Venezuela (during a single uprising). Colombia with its fifty-year civil war and Guatemala with its own thirty-seven-year civil war further expanded the meanings and uses of “disappear.”

The exhibition contains work by contemporary artists from each of these countries, who over the course of the last thirty years have made art about the disappeared. These artists have lived through the horrors of the military dictatorships that rocked their countries in the mid-decades of the twentieth century. Some worked in the resistance; some had parents or siblings who were disappeared; others were forced into exile. The youngest were born into the aftermath of those dictatorships. And still others have lived in countries maimed by endless civil war.

The exhibition is just one part of a city-wide series of exhibitions and programs that will be jointly presented by seven Santa Fe organizations – CCA, Center for Documentary Studies, El Museo, IAIA, MFA, SFAI, and SITE – and substantially underwritten by the Lannan Foundation.

Organized by the North Dakota Museum of Art.