The Disappeared

President Diana Natalicio
The Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts
The UTEP Centennial Museum
And
The Union Exhibition Gallery

Cordially invite you to attend a lecture by

His Excellency Héctor Marcos Timerman
Ambassador of the Argentine Republic to the United States of America

Thursday, August 27, 2009
5:00 p.m.
Undergraduate Learning Center, Room 106
UTEP Campus

Reception to Follow Presentation

Mr. Hector Marcos Timberman

Mr. Héctor M. Timerman was appointed Ambassador of the Argentine Republic to the United States of America in December 2007. He earned a Master’s degree in International Affairs from Columbia University, New York, NY, in 1981. Mr. Timerman served as Consul General of the Argentine Republic in New York from July 2004 until December 2007.

Before this position, Mr. Timerman developed an extensive career as a journalist, writing for different graphic and audio-visual media. In Argentina, he was a column writer for Noticias magazine and Ámbito Financiero newspaper, as well as co-director of Debate Magazine and host of several television and radio shows. In the United States he has contributed articles for The New York Times, Newsweek, The Nation, and The Los Angeles Times. He has been a lecturer on human rights in New York in 1979-1983 and in 2005-2006, and he is co-author of the book Torture (New Press, 2005). From 1978 until 1984, he was exiled in the United States.

His affiliations with international institutions include: Co-Founder and Board Member of Human Rights Watch in NewYork (1981-1989), Director of the Fund for Free Expression in London (1983-1989), Member of the Board of Directors of the Asamblea Permanente por los Derechos Humanos (Permanent Assembly for Human Rights) in Buenos Aires (20022004), and President of the Board of Directors of the International Coalition of Historic Site Museums of Conscience. Mr. Timerman was born in Buenos Aires on December 16, 1953. He is married to Argentine architect Anabelle Sielecki, and they have two daughters, Amanda and Jordana.

The Disappeared is an exhibition so ambitious in scope that it encompasses three exhibition spaces of The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP): Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts, Centennial Museum and Union Exhibition Gallery. Close cooperation between our units made it possible for El Paso to experience the artworks that comprise the exhibition, and the important and heart wrenching stories that they tell. The word “disappeared” was redefined during the military dictatorships that ruled many Latin American countries during the mid-to-late twentieth century, when it came to describe members of the resistance, their sympathizers and everyday citizens who were kidnapped, tortured, and killed by the regime.

The exhibition contains work by thirteen contemporary artists and one artists’ collective in a variety of media from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, Uruguay, and Venezuela, who over the course of the last thirty years have made art about the disappeared. Many of these artists have lived through the horrors of the dictatorships that disrupted life in their countries. Some worked in the resistance; some had parents or siblings who were disappeared; others were forced into exile. The younger artists were born into the aftermath of those dictatorships. Others have lived in countries maimed by endless civil war.

Many prominent cultural institutions in El Paso and Juárez have organized exhibitions or events in conjunction with UTEP’s hosting of The Disappeared. UTEP’s Union Cinema and The Film Salon at Trinity-First are sponsoring a series of films about the subject, and the El Paso Museum of Art is hosting the exhibition Niño Perdido (Lost Child), a series of drawings by Ilán Lieberman based on photographs of missing children whose disappearances were reported in local Mexican newspapers. The Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez with the Gun Gallery in Juárez is organizing an exhibition of art focusing on the disappearances of homes and livelihoods in Lomas de Poleo. The Lannan Foundation has generously underwritten many of the costs associated with all of these films and exhibitions. We thank the Foundation and our fellow El Paso institutions for supporting UTEP’s choice to bring this exhibition to our community. We hope that you will find your experience of The Disappeared to be moving and memorable.