Photographic Assembly in Post-Dictatorial Argentina and Uruguay

In two works of photographic assemblage, portraits of those disappeared under the last Argentine and Uruguayan dictatorships appeared on the walls of Montevideo and Buenos Aires. In 1984 Buenos Aires, the collective C.A.Pa.Ta.Co. produced afiches participativos in the months following the country’s return to democracy. For this project, the public was invited to colour in black-and-white photocopied portraits installed around the Plaza de Mayo. In 2008, Juan Angel Urruzola installed enormous portraits of the disappeared throughout the streets of Montevideo in a visual campaign that coincided with a referendum on the Law of Expiry in Uruguay. Both projects represent acts of political and artistic assembling shaped by precariousness, a condition of simultaneous endurance and fragility. This article contributes to contemporary debates surrounding the constitution of public space, community, and communication in post-dictatorial Southern Cone with a focus on the encounter between the image and an emergent public. Bringing together Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy of assemblage, Judith Butler’s reflections on political assembly, and Claire Bishop’s discussion of antagonism in participatory art, I argue that a precarious quality of assembly enables collective creation, dissent, and exchange within the space of the photographic assemblage.