Colors of memory. The mural "Argentina: dolor y experanza" and its social function in relation to the dictatorial past

Abstract

The present work inquires about the representations and the artistic and social interventions that occurred in the public space of the Province of Chaco, in relation to the past of the last dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983). We attend, specifically, the mural "Argentina: pain and hope", painted in 1986 in the Assembly Hall of the National University of the Northeast (city of Resistance) by the plastic artist Amanda Mayor de Piérola (mother of one of the disappeared in the called "Massacre of Margarita Belén"). We seek to analyze the graphic and contextual characteristics of this mural referring to the last dictatorial past in the Chaco, to understand the ways in which groups generate identity consciousness through mural art and, finally, to establish the contribution of the mural in the construction of a collective memory about the dictatorial past.

We maintain that murals are an effective way of expressing collective memories: they are "vehicles of memory" that communicate and transmit a meaningful experience of "entrepreneurial memory" groups. For this reason, mural painting fulfills a transforming function of space, as it generates exchange places that promote collective memory and identity.