Curatorie Dr : Martin Henatsch (Catalog)
This installation originates from the beginning of the Irak war. My idea formed from the first news of the American attack on Irak in March 2003. Soon I got to read the names of the first victims, most of them Latinos.
In Chile in 1998/ 1990 I did my military service for two years as a marine. There I witnessed a common practice of the American military “La Escuela de las Americas/Unitas“. The best Chilean soldiers got offered to fight in the Golf war on the US-American side. In case one survived this deployment, in which the Latinos were mostly used as cannon fodder, one would get an US-American passport as a Thank You. I got offered this deal too. It is highly likely that this practice was used during the Irak war as well. Therefor it is not unlikely that a young Chilean soldier will be killed in an US-American war these days. The production of myself as a soldier killed during the Irak war is fictional but not unrealistic. This is being proved by a real event. The death of a Dominican soldier became public in Irak June 2008. His name was: Alex Jimenez.
The artist is part of the world his is living in. For me, one of the tasks of an artist is to be a witness, or a contemporary witness. Many artist did this task throughout history like Goya with “Horrors of War“, Picasso with “Guernica“, Andy Warhol and Otto Dix. While Goyas work was published after his war, I find it important to react in time with the incident, in order to make contemporaries and contemporary witness think and prompt them to act. It is not my aim to show the cruelties of war as close to reality as possible, but to shine a light onto the possible consequences of the US-American action.
Alex Mora.
