Creating art can allow people to make peace and reckon with situations.

On January 16th, we attended a workshop with Marcelo Estbecorena who is an Argentine artist who lives in La Boca. I will never forget my experience working with him. He gave us clay and told us to work with the clay for a little while. He gave no instructions except to get to know the clay. I was sitting on the roof of his building with two other students molding my clay. As I rolled it over and over again, I began to notice cracks in the clay. This led me to think about some cracks in my own life - traumas I still need to work through, relationships I could improve on, and ways to better myself as a human. I discussed my thoughts with the two other students on the roof with me. We talked about our upbringings, things that make us happy, and things that make us sad. As we discussed, I found myself folding the clay into a variety of shapes. At one point I had made a heart; another time I had a city. I liked being able to turn one object into the next as I molded the clay. In life, most people have parts of their past that are difficult to sit with. Maybe the loss of a loved one, the violation of your trust, or a lack of personal identity. In order to keep growing as a human, I need to take the lessons I have learned from my past into my current experiences. Regardless of what form the clay took, it was still the same clay that I had been given at the beginning of the day. Some of the shapes were more sturdy than others, and some had more cracks. I was able to see how the person that I am molding myself into will continue to evolve and shape my lived experiences. This experience with Marcelo Estbecorena helped me make peace with some of my past traumas and cope with them in a way that felt healing and productive.

I also appreciated being able to see Marcelo Estbecorena’s performance in the large plastic bag. It scares me how hurt the planet is. In my opinion, his claim that plastic is the only eternal thing is true. In the PROA museum in La Boca, there was a video of a man carrying a bag of trash through a garbage dump. I probably stood at this exhibit for ten minutes, and the walk seemed eternal. There is so much waste in the world and these art forms are making people aware of this problem (Frasz, 2018). Marcelo Estbecorena’s take on this was quite moving for me to watch. I could tell his raw emotions as he smashed his face against the plastic bag, feelings of anger and fear. His performance was captivating and forced me to reckon with how large the environmental crisis is around the world. Viewing art that depicted the current climate crisis made me want to enact change. I think that the only way for me to find peace with the current state of the world is to advocate for change.

During the Argentine dictatorship between 1976 to 1983, censorship was a common practice and the arts were limited (Graham-Jones, 2001). The Parque De La Memoria serves as a counterpoint to the silencing of art. The park is filled with a variety of artistic mediums including sculptures and painted signs. The park itself can be seen as a piece of art as it is a creative space where people can wander freely. This is contrary to the dictatorship when this type of behavior would have been strictly prohibited. The park also is next to the water which is where many of the people who had disappeared were sent to die (Buenos Aires Ciudad, 2020). The park, which is full of art, is located directly next to a place where horrendous acts were committed during the dictatorship. The juxtaposition of these two facts furthers the reason why the Parque De La Memoria uses art to resist the brutal atrocities of the dictatorship. It allows the Argentine people to find some peace in a horrific situation and reckon with the decisions that were made during the dictatorship.