Argentinian Artist Claudia Bernardi Visually Unearths Brutalities Of Past And Present
Jan 7, 2021,08:10am EST|
Jackie Abramian Contributor
“Art is always changing and always possible. Even if the images are sad, the creative process is a remarkable opportunity,” says award-winning Argentinian artist and social justice and human rights advocate, Claudia Bernardi, whose deeply settled sorrow reflects as much in her voice as in her forensic unearthing artwork.
A professor at the California College of the Arts, and Founder of the Walls of Hope School of Art and Open Studio in Perquin Morazán, El Salvador and Sincelejo, Colombia, Bernardi’s transformative artistic journey began when she joined the 1986-founded non-profit, scientific NGO, Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF) in El Salvador, Guatemala and Ethiopia. She visualized and drew archeological maps of areas where human remains were exhumed– with associated objects and ballistic evidence. This deeply impacted her “born from memory and loss” art form reflected on her printmaking pieces that are “sculpted history” of the atrocities. Burying maps beneath pigments Bernardi’s “frescoes on paper” reveal a fluid message weaving “art, ethics, aesthetics and politics.”
Developing and facilitating community art projects worldwide, Bernardi’s collaborative work with survivors of state terror, political violence, and the exiled bring to life community-based murals painted by victims of human rights violations. She has collaborated with Amnesty International, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and with unaccompanied, undocumented Central American minors held in U.S. prisons.
“America’s ‘disappeared’ today are the Central American teenagers held in the U.S. criminal justice system who, forced to leave their countries because of violence and poverty, embarked on a horrifying journey to the United States. They’re not here to take anyone’s job away,” Bernardi is frustrated that many of the teenagers who turned themselves in to U.S. border officials to be safe were instead jailed. “A 16-year-old from Guatemala hoped to have another chance. He said, ‘we are the disappeared no one is looking for’.”
Unearthing Argentina’s Military Junta Atrocities
During my virtual interview with Bernardi, I accompanied her on an emotional journey back to 1976 Argentina, reliving the junta’s chokehold on the innocent population. Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina and orphaned as a teenager, Bernardi and her sister Patricia lived with their grandmother before she left them. Being left alone, instilled independence and strength, transforming her and Patricia into the resilient women they are today. Fending for themselves, they graduated from the university with degrees in Fine Arts and Anthropology respectively, while living through the 1976 overthrow of Isabel Peron’s government that unleashed a seven-year brutal military junta regime. With full U.S. government support, the regime systematically persecuted over 30,000 “disappeared” committing “dirty war” atrocities.
Bernardi recalls departing Argentina in 1979, as a 23-year-old, while her sister remained behind. The history she shares in her art is “unmasking the worst that happened in Argentina. It is always an open wound that never, never closes.” She recalls how Argentina’s universities’ open, agile space for political expressions dramatically changed with junta appointed deans. Students had to carry three forms of ID, one of which “the certification of good behavior” was issued at the neighborhood police stations–where many of the “disappeared” were taken.
More:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackieabramian/2021/01/07/argentinian-artist-claudia-bernardi-visually-unearths-brutalities-of-past-and-present/?sh=249f283b3a07
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I wonder if that's why they find it so easy to terrorize other people, having never had to experience it personally!
She's an amazing person. People who haven't been deepened by life experience are like sleep walkers by comparison. She truly seems so far beyond ordinary, doesn't she?
I found only one of those paintings online which could be copied and pasted in a larger size:
Déjame Florecer Una Vez Más - Allow Me To Flower One More Time. Collaborative and community-based ... [+] CLAUDIA BERNARDI
One really hopes that those who get the chance to study her words, her art will be opened, deepened, and summoned from their surface to a greater awareness.
Incidently, I need to mention I read about a political prisoner from Argentina who was able to get to the US where he became a professor later, and was stunned to discover at a large meeting of other educators, the very man who had tortured him mercilessly when he was in prison. He was simply paralyzed with fear and shock all over again.
I felt so sick just imagining how horrifying that would be!
Very interesting to learn you have been able to move into blues singing. It's not for superficial people at all, is it? It's always such a great moment when one gets a chance to hear really serious blues music. It's in its own category, forever.
