Silvia Levenson
Identidad Desaparecida
Museo del Vetro di Murano, 02/22/2016

A path between personal story and memory of a country

Venice, Murano Glass Museum
From March 12th to September 11th, 2016

The exhibition, greatly welcomed in Buenos Aires, Washington, Barcelona, Montevideo, Paris and Riga, is dedicated to the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and their indomitable work to give an identity to the children of the sons desaparecidos, their grandchildren, torn by the Argentine dictatorship off their natural parents and illegally given up for adoption.

"Even if the children of the desaparecidos are now adults, in my work I always speak of children", Levenson explains, "because it is in childhood that the trauma originated, when the soldiers, replacing the democratic organs of Argentine society, took the right of leaving alive or killing parents denying any family identity.” A painful incident, typical of Argentine history, but also personal for the artist, who has seen many family members and acquaintances directly involved.

The exhibition is exposing sculptures, installations and photographs of great evocative value and emotional impact that playing on the characteristics of glass - kiln cast or kilformed glass or as industrial material - suggest the gap, but also the objective analysis of the dealt subject, the torn identity. The glass, essential to contain and store liquids and foods, but also to build lenses, is the indispensable raw material of the artist's work, which in her pieces works for the conservation of the "body of the memory." Common everyday objects as small chairs, mats, swings and shoes are associated with glass knives, barbed wire, nails, tacks.

Completing the exhibition is a site-specific installation: 119 baby clothes in kiln cast glass - so many are the children of the desaparecidos who have been able to know their biological identity thanks to the DNA testing - hanging around the perimeter of the exhibition space into an uninterrupted chain, to enclose poetically and ideally the exhibition and at the same time tangible reminder of the painful and salvific work of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo.

Associated News

• February 22, 2016
  Silvia Levenson
  Identidad Desaparecida
  Museo del Vetro di Murano, 02/22/2016
  
  


• March 28, 2015
  Silvia Levenson - The Jüdische Kulturbund Project


• February 19, 2015
  Two Artists but one
  The Washington Post, 02/19/2015