La Maestra Amalia Pica: National (Mis)communication and (Re)education Interventions

• In Event: Recent Latin American Art: Beyond Limits

Abstract

In her work, the London-based, Argentine visual artist Amalia Pica explores the Dirty War era government’s ban of Venn diagrams and the application of other controlling educational practices. These dictatorial tactics aimed to discipline the body politic through prohibitions, surveillance, and historical reorientation in the schools. Pica’s work intervenes in history by analyzing these formal and didactic manipulations through the trope of the Argentine primary teacher. The guardapolvo-wearing Pica sets up performances and installations that challenge and (re)educate her public. Having grown up during the Dirty War years and later worked as a schoolteacher, she now positions her art viewers in (re)educational art situations to reveal the manipulations they faced as Argentine schoolchildren. In a sense, Pica’s (re)education interventions attempt to restore the national imaginary.

Although Pica lives abroad, her concerns with restoring the Argentine collective memory reveal a desire to develop a long-distance didactic connection with Argentines while, at the same time, engaging with her international audiences. This paper first reveals the formal and didactic mechanisms of Pica’s long-distance educational and historical interventions—in essence, how Pica presents (mis)communications and (re)educations and what formal methods she uses to achieve both. Additionally, this paper also unveils the framing devices that enable Pica’s work to straddle transnational divides and not only (re)teach Argentines but to also become translatable to others, thus, successfully oscillating between national and transnational.

Author

• Mabi Ponce de Leon, The Ohio State University