The missing monument for Washington DC or a proposal for a monument for Victor Jara

Within the framework of the Manif d'art 5.

---

Transforming lighting fixtures into sculptural elements, Iván Navarro makes politically charged work that is highly sensitive to the disinformation strategies of dictatorship and the double-talk of liberal democracies. Within the framework of the Manif d’art 5 having for title "Catastrophe? Quelle catastrophe!", the Chilean artist will investigate the dark side of the light. His artwork tackles political failure and specifically Augusto Pinochet's seventeen-year dictatorship in Chile, a reign marked by torture, murder, and government-ordered disappearances. Navarro's haunting video "The Missing Monument for Washington CD or a proposal for a monument for Victor Jara" refers to folksinger and songwriter Victor Jara, killed in September 1973 in Chile Stadium by Pinochet's forces. Two darkly-dressed barefoot figures ambiguously appear in an empty space with white bags over their heads. One is on all four, bearing the weight of the other who quietly and resolutely recites Jara's poem « Estadio Chile » [Chile Stadium], while, acoustic guitar in hand, strumming a single chord. A sculpture recasts the video’s unfolding as a fluorescent-tube rendering of a crouched human figure bearing a stack of paper on its "back". These giveaway sheets reproduce a still from the video on one side and Jara's poem on the other. Together, these works speak to catastrophe’s dispersive work, raising the veil on the horror of a repression.

---