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Daniel Hernández: Eros and Thanatos
Aldo Castillo Gallery
23 January-28 February 1998
by Michael Weinstein

Political art is not in fashion on the contemporary cultural scene. The global eclipse of the left after the fall of communism, and the hegemony of a neo-liberal economy and cultural conservatism have driven artists back to modernism, or into themselves. Art photographers in particular have fled from Postmodern cultural criticism, seeking to perfect and experiment with their dizzyingly variegated medium, or to register their personal dramas in images.

Photographers from the poorer and neo-colonized parts of the world have a greater difficulty in expunging politics from their art. They feel a need to bear winess to suffering and to make manifest their indignation against injustice. Yet these photographers are globalized sophisticates, inmersed in the height of their cultural times and very much in a fashion that they co-create.

Guatemalan photo-artist Daniel Hernández exemplifies the predicament of the contemporary photographer with a political conscience. Featured recently in the "Heads Up: New Faces in Contemporary Art" exhibit at Aldo Castillo Gallery, Hernández attemps to work his way through the regnant apolitical genres to a political statement that does not give way to propaganda. He is a personal dramatist who needs not so much give his private problems a public dimension, in the manner of modern political art, as use the public situation as a metaphor for his existential agonies, and vice-versa.  Hernández's project, which he executes through life-size black-and-white photographs, is to incite remembrance of Guatemala's recent 36-year civil war.

Using his friends, he poses them in symbolic scenarios to honor the dead, and to instill a sense of the horror of violence, and of the danger from the political right. Yet Hernández can only do this through his personal sentimentality.

The "Eros and Thanatos" series is emotionally expressive and, indeed, romantic-running the gamut from political to personal emphases. However, Premonition is the only one of Hernández's work that is successful in fulfilling the complex aspirations of his project. A large portrait of a young man's head in profile, surrounded by a border of 12 smaller photos of bodies mostly cut of at the neck, Premonition is politically explicit enough to unequivocally communicate Hernández's message, yet with great sensitivity. The man, whose face is close to the right-handedge of the frame, wears expression of reflective, even peaceful, concern as he contemplates his impending fate.

Hernández's most stunning photograph, Pathway to Pain, which rivals in it's clarity and piercing expression of complex emotion the still dramas of Japanese master Eikoh Hosoe, has no direct political content. We see a naked and handsome man lying across the railroad tracks of an old bridge. The contrast between his soft, supple body and his look of erotic pleasure, and the hard, unforgiving rails and ties admirably communicates the deep existential conection that Hernández discerns between love and death.
Interpreted through this image, the face of Premonition might be so peaceful because it signifies not only reconciliation with death, an embrace of it that undercuts the horror of repression and carnage.

Michael Weinstein is a professor of
political theory at Purdue University,
a Chicago photographic critic,
and a performance artist.





La fragilidad de Eros ante el implacable Thánatos
Obra reciente de Daniel Hernandez
Por Miguel Flores C.

"La mención es imposible sin el uso,
del mismo modo que la alegoría es impensable sin lo alegorizado
o la deconstrucción sin lo previamente construido"
¿Señal de los tiempos?
(1)


Eros + Thánatos, ubica a Daniel Hernández como un creador a través de la manipulación de la imagen. Con esta muestra Hernández se sumerge en los conceptos del arte contemporáneo(2) donde, "a similitud de los hermanos Starn, utiliza la fotografía más allá de simplemente una herramienta de dibujo rápido, y comprende cómo las piezas y materiales fotográficos constituyen una nueva paleta a estudiar por el artista del siglo XX."(3), y continua demostrando su habilidad técnica en el laboratorio, evidente en el minucioso proceso de revelado de grandes formatos fragmentados. Es en la fragmentación donde la obra de Eros + Thánatos adquiere una dimensión importante dentro de la trayectoria artística de este fotógrafo perfeccionista, porque a diferencia de sus anteriores trabajos, en esta ocasión llega a las últimas consecuencias a través de la automutilación del trabajo fotográfico, aspecto que años atrás evadía. Toda la obra esta inmersa en las múltiples posibilidades de la deconstrucción de la imagen. Pero cada uno de los fragmentos se transforman en piezas únicas, universos independientes dependiendo del contexto donde lo ubique como podemos apreciar en las obras Umbral y La piedad de la muerte.

Eros + Thánatos es el resultado de la experimentación que tiene como antecedente exposiciones anteriores donde inició el proceso de cambio. Como determinante puede definirse la presentada en la Universidad Rafael Landívar (4), y otra presentada recientemente en España(5). Cabe mencionar que desde su exposición Rostros de la Música, Hernández, manejó el concepto de la "fotografía-objeto" al presentar retratos de músicos dentro de escaparates planos, iniciándose así el camino que lo condujo a la muestra de hoy.

Los conceptos de Eros + Thánatos son campo fértil para la creación, considerados como conceptos contrapuestos que llegan a necesitarse el uno del otro, teniendo como denominador común el sufrimiento y el temor a lo desconocido. En esta muestra Hernández no se desprende del desnudo masculino como arquetipo de belleza, sino que además le adjudica el valor de la vida. En esta ocasión lo suma a la muerte, vista como el designio del fin absoluto de algo positivo y vivo, como un aspecto perecedero y destructor de la existencia. Toda la colección tiene su génesis en los múltiples contrasentidos que se dan a diario en la sociedad guatemalteca. El binomio amor + muerte es común en su generación.

Eros + Thánatos aporta a la vida artística de Hernández la deshinibición de los marcos preconcebidos y el uso de niveles sobre puestos, en obras como Sacro escarabajo y CHP-V-7, la ofrecen al observador en otras lecturas de los hechos evidentes a través de la imagen. El hecho de usar un negativo más de una vez, nos muestra lo mutante del arte contemporáneo, esto es claramente perceptible en obras como "La Piedad de la Muerte" y Mater dolorosa. Hernández no puede ocultar sus estudios de arquitectura, muchas de las obras de esta exposición muestran el espíritu y la exactitud estructural, sumado a una estética pulcra.

La coincidencia en las posiciones de los cuerpos masculinos y de cadáveres encontrados en cementerios clandestinos, aluden estereotipos de una composición clásica propia de la iconografía del Renacimiento y el Barroco, sus modelos se alejan de la belleza sublime de otras exposiciones, sus cuerpos ahora son más naturales y menos rebuscados, tanto en la representación de la muerte como para el espíritu del amor. El uso del foco selectivo(6) brinda al observador una variedad de volumétrica sobre determinados planos fotográficos.
Eros + Thánatos está concebida con dos grandes mundos donde el "amor-vida" lo representan obras como Eros, El Camino del Dolor, Ascensión, Umbral, Prisión Interior, Encarnaciones y Premonición, mientras que la obra No oigo, no veo, ...me callo constituye la pieza de unión entre los universos de la vida y de la muerte. Bajo el dominio de Thánatos son obvias Memoria, Mater dolorosa , La piedad de la muerte, CHP-V-7, y Ángeles que entran en el campo de la destrucción y muerte. Paradójicamente la obra que cierra e inicia este ciclo es Sacro Escarabajo símbolo del retorno perpetuo en culturas antiguas como la egipcia.

Todas la piezas que componen esta muestra conllevan a un mundo de interpretaciones, todas las imágenes de Daniel Hernández nos llevan a la meditación --a veces con espanto-- sobre la fragilidad de Eros y la contundencia de la palabra muerte.
Guatemala, agosto de 1997.
__________________________________________
(1) Carlos Jiménez / Ruinas y duraciones de la fotografía latinoamericana. / Lápiz 128-129. Feb. 1997 / Madrid, España.
(2) Hay que tomar en cuenta que interrogantes como ¿Por que fragmentar la imagen? ¿Por que ubicar áreas en diferentes niveles? ¿Por que desnudos? ¿Por qué esqueletos? ¿Por que la obra fotográfica debe poseer márgenes en ángulo recto? No tienen sentido alguno.
(3) Manuel Santos / Tiempos de belleza y decadencia. / Revista Lápiz No. 104 junio 1994 / Madrid, España.
(4) Cuatro fotógrafos, URL, Guatemala, agosto 1996.
(5) Galería de la Fundación CAM., octubre 1996 Alicante, Valencia, España.
(6) Propiedad de la cámara que permite utilizar la profundidad focal delgada para acentuar un elemento dado.





MEMORIA DE UN ANGEL
Daniel Hernández-Salazar

Seguimiento fotográfico de la intervención en espacios públicos Angel Callejero
realizada en conmemoración del 1er. aniversario del asesinato de Monseñor Juan Gerardi
Ciudad de Guatemala, 26 de abril de 1999.


Los años pasan
Se apilan como páginas de un libro
Todo queda impune
Tengo que gritarlo


La idea de pegar fotos en las calles me viene de muy atrás. Para ser exacto, desde que un amigo me regaló un libro que registraba en fotos cómo Ernest Pignon-Ernest instaló una serie de litografías con la imagen del poeta Rimbaud por las calles de Charleville, Francia. Pasó el tiempo, Luego vi el trabajo del cubano Félix Gonzáles-Torres en México y confirmé el interés de expresarme en espacios públicos.

Mi proyecto original era instalar una fotocopia de la obra Para que todos lo sepan en un muro localizado cerca de la plaza mayor de la ciudad de Guatemala. Esa obra la dediqué a la memoria de Monseñor Juan Gerardi Conedera, asesinado en esta ciudad el 26 de abril de 1998 a golpes de piedra en la cabeza, dos días después de publicar el informe sobre el proyecto de Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica, REMHI. Este hizo referencia a 200,000 casos de violaciones de derechos humanos, ocurridos en Guatemala durante los 36 años que duró la guerra civil en este país. En febrero de 1999 decidí combinar mi deseo de recordar y denunciar el no-esclarecimiento del crimen, con la idea de "apropiarse" espacios públicos. De aquí nació el proyecto para la intervención urbana Angel Callejero.

Lo primero fue convencer a un buen grupo de personas a que colaboraran conmigo en la intervención propiamente dicha, instalando los murales, copia de la Obra original. Luego seleccionar los lugares donde se instalarían de acuerdo a tres criterios: A) que el lugar fuera simbólico en relación al crimen y a su no-esclarecimiento; B) que por el lugar seleccionado pasara mucha gente que lo viera. C) que el lugar tuviera una "magia" particular. Esta etapa me tomó un par de semanas hasta definir que serían 35 puntos.
La siguiente etapa fue encontrar el método más rápido y clandestino posible, que permitiera instalar los murales en los puntos seleccionados, en el menor tiempo y con el menor riesgo para los participantes. La instalación se haría de noche para que las imágenes sorprendieran al público la mañana del 26 de abril, 1er. aniversario del asesinato de Monseñor Gerardi. Ningún texto acompañaría a la imagen, ya que ésta, estaba ya asociada al informe REMHI, por el cual Monseñor Gerardi fue asesinado. Además para que el efecto de la intervención fuera más cuestionador, ambiguo e inquietante al observador.

La instalación se realizó como previsto y sin mayores contratiempos, la noche del 25 de abril. A la mañana siguiente, di inicio al seguimiento fotográfico de los ángeles. Hice la excepción de trabajar esta ves en color (mi trabajo es siempre en blanco y negro) para establecer una distancia entre los murales, las metáforas, y la realidad que permaneció en color. Logrando así un diálogo entre las dos dimensiones.

A los pocos días empezó lo que llamé "la cacería de los ángeles", por parte de personas o instituciones que se sintieron aludidas o agredidas por la presencia de los murales en ciertos puntos. Como anécdota hubo un caso en que "apareció" una piedra similar a la que supuestamente fue utilizada para asesinar a Monseñor Gerardi, al pie de la imagen que se instaló frente al obelisco del monumento a los Próceres de la Independencia. En otros casos, y según se fue entendiendo el significado de la instalación, los ángeles fueron siendo "eliminados" por "desconocidos". Me parece importante mencionar dentro de estos, los que estaban instalados en: Estadio del Ejército, Campo de Marte, Antigua Escuela Politécnica y Policía Nacional.

Los demás murales fueron desapareciendo con el tiempo. Más rápido cuando llegaron las lluvias. Fue muy interesante ver la vida de estos seres transcurrir rápidamente, recordando la de muchas personas que fueron desaparecidas. Vi en las piezas que se despegaban, páginas de informes o listados que iban cayendo lentamente al paso de los días.
El periodista Maurice Echeverría escribió sobre esta intervención: "Lo que se da uno cuenta es que el arte no es o no debería ser mero complemento de una realidad social, política, o individual, sino síntoma, signo, símbolo, representación y verdad. Para siempre el Nunca más tendrá algo de ángel surcado de realidad y tono sepia. El arte nos redime del crimen. Unos ojos nos miran desde cualquier esquina."

Daniel Hernández-Salazar, 26 de julio del 2000.




Death in Guatemala
By Judith Barry
From the November, 1998 Journal of the International Association of Phisicians in AIDS Care.

When I worked as a photojournalist, my objective was to produce truthful images reflecting the living conditions in Guatemala. Now, working as an artist, I want my work to call public attention to what has happened, so that it can never happen again.

- Daniel Hernández-Salazar

Nearly three years ago the 36-year civil war in Guatemala officially ended with the election in January 1996, of President Alvaro Arzú Irigoyen. The subsequent peace accord between the government and the leftist guerrillas has led to a reduction in reporting of human rights violations. However, Guatemala still has the second highest per-capita crime rate in Latin America, second only to Columbia. The January 1998 terrorist attack on a busload of St. Mary's College students and faculty underscores the degree to which civil rights and safety are still in jeopardy in Guatemala.

This violence has its roots in 1954 when President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorized the CIA to overthrow the lawfully elected government of Jacobo Arbenz at the behest of the United Fruit Company, now known as Chiquita-Brands International. Recently, the well-publicized case of Jennifer Harbury, a Harvard-trained lawyer and US citizen married to a Guatemalan commando, has focused public attention on the long-term nature of the CIA's involvement. When her husband, Efraín Bámaca, "disappeared" after being wounded in combat, the Guatemalan military maintained that he had died immediately, but later US Senator Robert Torricelli (D.-NJ) confirmed publicly that Bámaca had been taken into custody by the Guatemalan army, tortured and finally extrajudicially executed. High-ranking CIA officials were intimately acquainted with the circumstances of Bámaca's death although their culpability was never proved. However, the global publicity surrounding this case led President Bill Clinton to order an official inquiry into these and other cases involving US citizens in Guatemala. Ultimately, several CIA employees were disciplined and two were dismissed.

One of the many difficulties Harbury faced in trying to ascertain what had happened to her husband was discovering in which of the many clandestine and unmarked mass graves he was buried. With the end of the war the discovery of these sites led to the necessary process of exhuming and identifying the bodies. A number of people volunteered to help including Daniel Hernández-Salazar, a Guatemalan artist and former photojournalist for Reuters and the Associated Press. During this period Hernández-Salazar produced the remarkable images, popularly known as the "angel" series, which have become the symbols of human rights in Guatemala.

As Hernández-Salazar was working in the graves, he became fascinated with the beauty and poetic quality of some of the human bones. In particular, the scapulae reminded him of angel wings. He first combined them with male figures who covered their eyes, ears, and mouth with their hands, symbolizing the self-imposed blindness, deafness, and silence of the Guatemalan people to the murder of thousands of "enemies" of the Guatemalan military during the three-and-a-half decade war of counterinsurgency.

These images came to the attention of the Catholic Archbishop's office in Guatemala which commissioned a fourth "angel" with its mouth open to symbolize the responsibility to speak the truth--the truth recorded in the Project for the Recovery of Historic Memory. The "angel" pictures are the cover art for this four-part document detailing over 37,000 human rights violations, most of which were at the behest of the Guatemalan army.

Two days after the public presentation of this report in the Cathedral of Guatemala City on April 24, 1998, the bishop who commissioned the study, Monsignor Juan Gerardi, was bludgeoned to death with an eight-pound block of cement. The bishop's skull was crushed. His brains were splattered on the floor of his garage. His face was so disfigured that he could only be identified by a ring on his finger. Forty-eight hours later thousands of Guatemalan citizens marched in a silent protest, carrying placards adorned with large blow-ups of Hernández-Salazar's "angel" photos.

Subsequently, these images have been widely exhibited on television, in newspapers, on Web sites devoted to Guatemala, and in art galleries such as the Aldo Castillo Gallery in Chicago and the Primary Object Gallery in San Antonio, Texas. The following interview took place in September 1998.

Journal: What led you to volunteer to work in the mass graves?
Hernández-Salazar: I have always been interested in facing challenges in my life and making other people do the same. Exposure to the social and psychological effects of this civil war made me find a way to represent what I felt. I also believed that it was very important to make people aware of what happened during those years. The testimony of those terrible things are the remains of the victims buried in the clandestine graves, so I decided to include them in my art.

When I worked as a photojournalist, my objective was to produce truthful images reflecting the living conditions of this country. Now, working as an artist, I want to produce powerful images to make people here understand the importance of exhuming our recent past. Simultaneously, I want to get the rest of the world involved in what happened here.
When I worked with news agencies I had the chance to take photos of the exhumations, but I always wished for more time so that I could make a personal interpretation of what I saw. Press agencies are always rushing to be first with pictures. Now that I am working for myself, I am able to invest as much time as I need to produce the images. More than helping to identify the remains of the victims, I want to call public attention to what has happened--to use the power of these images to emphasize that this must never happen again. It is similar to the message a visitor receives at the US Holocaust Museum.

Journal: Who are in these graves?
Hernández-Salazar: The people buried in the graves are ordinary people: peasants in the countryside, students, union workers, and human rights activists from the cities, all of whom were actively struggling for their rights. Additionally, there are other victims who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Journal: What in particular led you to conceive the "angel" series?
Hernández-Salazar: The idea for the "angel" series came to me in July 1997 after the exhumation of nine peasants in a grave on a remote farm. The peasants were murdered by the Guatemalan army after protesting that their salaries had not been paid for two years. The "angel" series is part of a larger series, "Eros+Thanatos," where I combined images of male nudes with human remains to represent my thoughts about life and death. I wanted to show how the Guatemalan people do not want to face their problems, especially the violence and massacres that happened during the armed conflict. I also wanted to show the impossibility of free expression.

I proposed the fourth "angel" with its mouth open to the director of the archbishop's human rights office after they decided to use the "angel" series to illustrate the four-volume report of the Project for the Recovery of Historic Memory (Proyecto Interdiocesano de Recuperación de la Memoria Historica/acronym REMHI). With the addition of the fourth "angel" to the three earlier ones, I made a new piece "Esclarecimiento" which became the poster for the presentation of the REMHI report on April 24, 1998.

Journal: What have been the reactions to the images?
Hernández-Salazar: Strong. I remember the comment of a secretary when she saw the fourth (speaking) "angel." The image was printed on the invitation card for the presentation ceremony at the Cathedral in Guatemala City. She said, "It is beautiful...but it scares me." And a woman at the Aldo Castillo Gallery in Chicago told me that the pictures expressed the feelings of a close friend who left Guatemala because of death threats.

Journal: What is the Project for the Recovery of Historic Memory?
Hernández-Salazar: The project was conceived by Monsignor Juan Gerardi who directed the project until the presentation of the report and his assassination two days later. His team of sociologists, psychologists, historians and lawyers, working with the Catholic Church in every region of Guatemala, collected thousands of testimonies given by victims of the war, their relatives, and members of the security forces--the army, paramilitary groups, and death squads--describing crimes committed during the war. This team classified and analyzed all the information to produce the four-book report, "Guatemala, Never Again." The first book is about the effects of violence (cover image: angel covering his eyes); the second book (cover image: angel covering his mouth) describes the structure of the repressive forces and the torture techniques that were used; the third book (cover image: angel covering his ears) discusses the historic events that provoked the war; and the fourth book (cover image: angel with his mouth open, speaking) contains the names of more than 20,000 victims who died during the war.

Journal: What was the reaction of the Guatemalan army to the report, especially since they are charged with the majority of the 37,000 human rights abuses recounted in it?
Hernández-Salazar: The first reaction was silence. After that, they tried to minimize the information written in the report. Colonel Noak, an army officer (the army's former spokesman) who was interviewed by the short-wave radio station Radio Netherlands two-and-a-half months ago, said the army should ask forgiveness from the people for the "excesses" it committed during the war. Shortly after his interview was broadcast, he was captured and imprisoned. The reason the army gave for his arrest was that he spoke without permission. One month later, he was released. This shows how the army, as in other instances here, doesn't want to face what it did.

Journal: Was there a relationship between the unveiling of the report and Monsignor Gerardi's assassination?
Hernández-Salazar: Nothing has been proved, but the Catholic Church, human rights groups, and many people believe he was killed because of the report. There is very little hope that the actual murderer(s) and the intellectual murderer(s) behind the assassination will be captured. Recently Father Orantes, Gerardi's assistant at his parish church, was arrested and charged with the murder. Monsignor Gerardi's corpse will be exhumed so it can be re-examined. There is a lot of confusion. People who do not like the report want it to be forgotten. But the report is circulating widely. The first edition of 2,500 copies sold out. There will be another edition of 5,000 by the end of this year. Plus 150,000 copies were published in newspaper format and distributed free. There are offers to do editions in other languages. I think the bishop's murder was politically motivated and all this contradictory information (disinformation) is intended to confuse public opinion, dilute the report's impact, and make it more difficult to resolve the crime.

Journal: How did the silent protest after the assassination come about?
Hernández-Salazar: I think it was organized by the Catholic Church and various human rights organizations. The Archbishop's human rights office initially printed posters with the "angel" photos to announce the presentation ceremony at the Cathedral. Since the Church still had some posters when Monsignor Gerardi was killed, they distributed them so that people could use them as placards in the protest march. And some people who had already received the posters brought them as well.

Journal: What do you see as the most effective site for your images--television, newspapers, the Gerardi Web site?
Hernández-Salazar: If I think "effective" depends on how many people saw the images and got the message, I would say the poster was the most effective medium because it was everywhere. Also the newspapers, because the images appeared there so frequently. But if I understand "effective" as the place where the images were best presented and observed, I would say the galleries here and abroad.

Journal: What has been the most effective medium for reaching people in Guatemala?
Hernández-Salazar: I think the poster because the people really liked it. Many of the posters hanging in churches and universities were taken by people who wanted to have one. People framed them and hung them in their homes and businesses. I was very sad when the bishop was killed, but at the same time I was proud to see my work in the hands of so many people who found it representative of what they wanted to say in that moment during the march. In some way they "appropriated" the images as their own. I can compare my sensation to that of a composer when he hears one of his compositions sung by hundreds of people because they like and identify with it.

Judith Barry is an artist and writer who lives in New York.

 
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