Fig. 1 Eugenio Dittborn, 1983. Sin rastros (Pintura aeropostale num. 13) [No Tracks (Airmail Painting No. 13)], photo screenprint, 175 x 145.5 cm. Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas, Austin.
Eugenio Dittborn Remembers the Forgotten, Part 2
Within the Blanton Museum of Art’s Latin American Collection there are two early Airmail paintings. Sin rastros (Pintura aeropostale num. 13) [No Tracks (Airmail Painting No. 13)] (1983) (Fig. 1) shows a series of women who escaped the grasps of the law and also depicts a hanged man originally created by José Guadalupe Posada, a Mexican printmaker, which dates back to the Mexican Revolution. The image of the hanged man is opposite the image of a disappeared person “in an equation between two fates in different historical moments.” (1) This juxtaposition has been interpreted as a “desire to ‘salvage memory’ ‘within a political climate that attempted to erase virtually all trace of it.’” (2) The title of this piece also alludes to the notion of disappearance and the idea of being gone without a trace.
In the bottom left-hand corner of this piece is written “Ninguna huella ha podido demostrar la supuesta eyaculación de los ahorcados” which translates loosely to “No trace has been shown of the alleged ejaculation of the hanged.” This seems to refer to the effects on the body when hung as this will sometimes cause an erection and ejaculation in males. But, this phrase suggests that we will never know if this myth is true because the bodies of the disappeared are not to be found. There is no way to find a clandestine camp or the site of a hanging without physical traces. This also springs to mind the myth of the mandragora or the mandrake since it is said that one will grow where ever human blood or semen contaminate the ground, including at the foot of gallows or hanged men. (3) A mandrake springing up would perhaps mark the spot of a hanged man, but perhaps there is a deeper connection. Because the mandrake springing up is a myth, and executions of the disappeared happened in clandestine camps and the grave sites were hidden and secret, there would be no trace of either one. So, it seems as though there could be the assumption that Dittborn equated the disappeared to myth, much like how many of the citizens denied what was happening all around them.
References:
1. Jacqueline Barnitz, Twentieth-century art of Latin America, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001),290-291.
2. Ibid.
3. John Carter, “Myths and Mandrakes,” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 96 (Mar 2003), 146-147.
