(Meeting with War Veterans Group, in Mercado Roberto Huembes, Managua. The two veterans that worked with Auras of War project, are part of this cooperative. Photo: Ernesto Salmerón. )
This Project researches the damage produced by a social-revolutionary assistance that was not able to sustain the collective project of solidarity in Nicaragua seen from inside and out. Auras of War puts forward, through an installation and a simultaneous performance, a way of maintaining human contact from an individual perspective, and finds viable means of mutual exchange between people.
The Auras of War project works directly with a group of war veterans searching for ways of reaching the acknowledgment they disserve and expose the need to generate employment for people within this postwar society, who are treated as objects of use and waste.
Pieces of the Project
1.”The Wall”: extracted from a Colonial house in Granada, Nicaragua, with the graffiti image of a smashed national hero Augusto C. Sandino (2 tons of weight, 1.5 meters x 1m x 0.30 m).
2. “El Gringo”: IFA truck made in the ex Democratic Republic of Germany, shipped to Nicaragua as part of the solidarity agreements with the ex socialist block. The IFA trucks were used during the war to transport soldiers to the fire front.
3. “Desmovilizado” (performance): Two disabled war veterans, one from the Sandinista Army, and one from the Contra Army. The uncertainties of war are performed lively by Don Rigoberto López Pérez (Ex Contra soldier) and Adolfo Palma Castro (Ex Sandinista soldier).
Forces they could not control pulled them to armed confrontations they are not able to explain. Don Rigo looked for a job as a janitor and was forced to enlist into the Guardia National Guard for the Somoza dynasty. Adolfo participated in different insurrections in the West of the Country for the FSLN, where he lost his right arm. They both work in a little group of veterans in Managua.
Exhibit
The project is intended as an installation of the IFA truck “El Gringo” and “The Wall” of Sandino, also with the performance “Desmovilizado” of two war veterans as sentries of the Latin-American revolutionary icon of Sandino.
The public of the 52nd Venice Biennale will be confronted to a piece about the post-war and the stage of a diluted revolution with no clear replies in the actual Nicaraguan society.
“The Wall” is exhibited inside the truck itself, and as an interaction with the truck, people will have to go inside to look at The Wall. The truck and The Wall will stay for the rest of the biennale. The war veteran’s performance will take place only during the opening days; documentation will remain as part of the installation for the rest of the biennale.
Ernesto Salmerón.
Feb 2007
