Abstract
Based on the notion of mediated recognition as a strategy to extend the applicability of traditional recognition theory to a wider range of human interactions, I propose artworks as suitable mediators in recognitive relations concerning victims of human rights violations. To support my idea, I analyse three pieces embracing the creative potential of victimhood experiences in Colombia which facilitate visitors to engage with the other represented there, the victimised. The enticing aesthetic encounter may generate cognitive and emotional questioning, giving visitors elements for identifying victims as persons and, more importantly, for acknowledging their victimising experience, which I argue, has normative relevance in as much as it shows how a person should not be treated.
Introduction – What is recognition?
In everyday language, the word recognition could be used to mean several things such as recalling something or someone from memory, identifying people or objects, accepting the existence or validity of something, showing public praising or appreciation of acts or persons, ascribing specific qualities to someone or something, or even making something visible. Despite that broad spectrum of senses, the discussion here is restricted to a narrow meaning of recognition as a relational process. As it will be argued later, recognising the other as a person means acknowledging that their moral status is equal to our own and, consequently, relating to them in the way we are morally obliged to, given our shared condition as human persons (Laitinen, 2006; Margalit, 2001).
Contemporary theories of recognition have proposed the inclusion of a mediator in recognitive relations to extend the applicability of traditional notions of recognition theory to a wider range of human interactions (Cottle, 2007; Driessens and Nærland, 2022; Koskinen, 2017). In this paper, I build on those ideas to support my proposal to consider artworks as suitable mediators in recognitive relations concerning victims of human rights violations. I argue that as with any other form of mediated recognition, some artworks may promote ethical encounters that facilitate identification and acknowledgement of persons possibly providing motivation for their recognition. My main idea is that the cognitive and emotional questioning generated by the aesthetic interaction with some artworks has the potential to offer elements for identifying victimised people as persons, and more importantly for acknowledging the normative relevance of their victimising experience as evidence of how persons should not be treated.
That being said, I do not subscribe to prescriptive theories of art; 1 in my view, the relevant issues for aesthetic enquiry are not what art should do but instead what specific artworks actually do and, based on that, what art could possibly do in certain situations. Therefore, in what follows I do not intend to offer a general theory of art as mediator in recognitive relations but a descriptive overview of how some specific works of art seem to induce ethical encounters among various subjects, potentially acting as mediators in their recognitive relation. Similarly, while illustrating how artworks may mediate in the process of recognition of victimised persons, this paper does not concern itself with any other possible uses of the arts in the context of human rights violations; those ideas have been studied elsewhere (Bahum, 2015; Bickford, 2014; Bisschoff, 2013; de Greiff, 2014; Edwards, 2004; Golebiewski, 2014).
Regarding terminology, throughout this text I use the term ‘victim’ in a factual sense – as a label referring to a legal category–not as a fixed identity or category of person. The term ‘victim of human rights violations’ denotes: Persons who individually or collectively suffered harm, [of various types], through acts or omissions that constitute gross violations of international human rights law, or serious violations of international humanitarian law.
2
However, I prefer using ‘victimised person’ or ‘victimised people’, as they emphasise that these are individuals upon whom harmful actions have been inflicted. These are people who, due to the criminal conduct of others, come to be classified as victims within a particular legal framework. While those with specific experiences – namely, suffering human rights violations – may fall under the legal category of victim, they should not be reduced to it or excluded from the broader category of person.
In terms of methodology, this paper applies a qualitative descriptive design (Lambert and Lambert, 2012) to provide a characterisation of mediated recognition using the arts, a phenomenon for which there is still limited knowledge and theoretical development (Doyle et al., 2020). The three artworks analysed were selected using purposive sampling (Andrade, 2021; Campbell et al., 2020): ‘[T]he logic and power of purposeful sampling rests on the in-depth study of information rich cases’ (Emmel, 2013: 34). All three pieces came from a deep reflection on the experiences of victims of human rights violations and they are well known works in art circles, so there are ample academic and non-academic publications about them; such richness in content and information makes them suitable for the chosen sampling technique. The analysis draws on personal observation, documentary analysis of curatorial texts, and art criticism. It is important to emphasise that the critical evaluation and interpretation of artworks constitute a reason-based exercise (Gillon, 2017: 149–160), involving both objective and subjective elements. This dual nature, however, ‘does not negate their validity or downgrade them to products of simple inspirational activities’ (Gemtou, 2010: 10); rather, it grants them intellectual flexibility.
The text is structured as follows. The first section offers a theoretical overview about the concept of interpersonal recognition, following the response model proposed by Laitinen (2002) and adopting the taxonomy developed by Koskinen (2017). The second section examines the impact of misrecognition on individual subjectivity, as articulated in Honneth’s theory (Honneth, 1995) and uses this to explore the particularities of recognition for victims of human rights violations. The third section reviews recent developments in the notion of mediated recognition. The last section presents my own proposal, describing each of the selected artworks–Aliento, Relicarios and Duelos – used to illustrate the argument. For an enriched reading experience, I strongly encourage readers to access the links provided, which include images and videos of each artpiece. The text concludes with a summary of the main argument and a brief conclusion.
Theory of recognition
Traditionally recognition is understood as a relation in which two subjects take each other as subjects of some kind and relate to each other ‘in the light of normative considerations relevant to such “taking”’ (Laitinen, 2006: 49). Thus, when a subject A recognises a subject B as an X, A takes B as an X and A treats B in accordance with what A considers morally adequate for an X. 3 Precisely, multidimensional theories of recognition (Hegel, 2018; Honneth, 1994; Ricoeur, 2005; Taylor et al., 1994) evaluate the phenomenological or even ontological relevance recognition has on multiple spheres of life, analysing different forms of ‘taking’ a subject (as a person, or as a certain kind of person, or as certain person) (Ikäheimo, 2002; Koskinen, 2017; Laitinen, 2002). My interest here is specifically in the kind of recognition given to a subject qua person; then recognition becomes an inter personas matter and A and B, the subjects in question, people who engage in an intersubjective recognitive relation.
Thus, in principle when subjects recognise each other as persons, they acknowledge and honour the status of the other (Margalit, 2001: 128–129) which is the very same moral standing of themselves, and they relate to one another in the way they owe to in view their equal condition as human persons (Laitinen, 2006).
Without giving a detailed treatment of the concept, suffice to say that a human person is not merely a vulnerable biological entity – a homo sapiens – it is also, and at the very same time, at least potentially, a being with deontic capacities able to construct social norms (Ikäheimo, 2002; Riley, 2018), to act according to its own judgements, to associate and cooperate with others, and to form emotional attachments with some. 4
One could distinguish three recognitive levels in the relational process of A recognising B (Ikäheimo and Laitinen, 2007; Koskinen, 2017) two of them, identification and acknowledgement, are evaluative in nature and the third one full recognition is responsive. These three levels do not indicate sequential stages but ‘increasing order of specificity’ in the recognitive relation (Koskinen, 2019), that is to say, There is an order of dependency from the more specific to the less specific in the sense that acknowledgement presupposes identification, and recognition in the paradigmatic sense presupposes both acknowledgement and identification (Koskinen, 2019: 36).
In this sense, at the less specific level, A identifies B as a person by evaluating B’s features according to A’s idea of personhood. This is a generic identification that only requires a comparative process. 5 Then, increasing specificity, A acknowledges those normative principles or values A considers specifically applicable to persons. The final element is a response to, or an action based on, the previous two. At this level B, a person, is a source of whatever moral obligations A has acknowledged, then A relates to B according to that moral mandate.
In an ideal situation, if B is deemed a person then A treats B with the respect and consideration due to a person. However, if the evaluation turns out negative and A does not identify B as a person, A is not compelled to treat B in any particular way, then treating B as a non-person seems a valid response from A’s perspective. The same happens if A’s normative values prescribe an unequal treatment to all of any of the attributes identified in a person. Both describe cases of misrecognition (Laitinen, 2012), I will come back to this in the next section.
Characterised in that manner, recognition appears to be the morally desirable response to evaluative and normative features of personhood within an interpersonal encounter (Laitinen, 2006). Within this response model of recognition, as termed by Laitinen (2002), simply identifying someone as a person, granting her any features of personhood and acknowledging her normative status, do not in itself constitute recognition; it is the response to that identification and acknowledgement which represents an act of full recognition. This conceptualisation has at least two conceptual implications.
On the one hand, to be meaningful, the response of a recogniser must be such that its content is understood and accepted by the one who is recognised (Ikäheimo and Laitinen, 2007). This requires the recognised person to be not only aware of the treatment (Laitinen, 2002: 466) but also, I would say, that such treatment fits her own normative expectations, otherwise it would not be accepted as adequate treatment. 6
On the other hand, there is no guarantee of receiving the ‘right’ response. The attitudes and actions taken as a response to an interpersonal interaction rest on the autonomous judgement of the potential recogniser – though this judgement is not made in a vacuum. The recogniser’s ‘responding is not a matter of mere cognition, but also of volitional and emotional responsiveness’ (Koskinen, 2017: 68). All those aspects influence the evaluative process involved in a recognitive relation and ultimately the response given. Even after a positive identification of the other as a person, someone could autonomously decide not to treat that person on the basis of equality, with respect and consideration. For whatever reason (e.g. rage, indifference, self-interest, ignorance, or hate), that someone is not motivated to complete the recognition by relating to the other on the basis of moral equality; thus the response fails to be an act of recognition. 7
Finally, it is also important to add a comment regarding the dynamic essence of normative considerations, these are not universal nor atemporal, they depend on contextual historical frameworks that define what a person is and dictate how people relate to each other (Butler, 2010; Fraser and Honneth, 2003). Moreover, the kind of treatment given to people who are objects of recognition depends on the normative values of recognisers, hence there is some kind of power asymmetry in place as the values of the recognisers take precedence over those of people claiming recognition (McNay, 2008). As a result, adequate treatment of others identified as persons is not a given, identification and acknowledgement of personhood or humanity do not ensure adherence to specific normative standards but that movement appears to be a minimal condition for it (Koskinen, 2017).
Misrecognising victims, recognising persons
Before delving into practical aspects of recognition, I will focus for a moment on the idea of misrecognition which ranges from total absence of recognition to incomplete forms of it. This discussion could give a more concrete picture of why recognition matters (Margalit, 2002), particularly for victims of gross violations of human rights. Misrecognition of someone differs from recognition ‘precisely in that misrecognition is inadequate regard, whereas due recognition is adequate regard, in light of the evaluative and normative features of the other’ (Laitinen, 2012: 29).
Misrecognition is then an inadequate response to the normatively relevant features of someone (Laitinen, 2012: 26); any form of misrecognition of the other – be it simple disregard, contempt, or even ill treatment (Laitinen, 2012: 28–29) has consequences for the one who feels misrecognised.
As a relational idea, recognition is considered to be essential for building self-identity which is ‘formed or malformed through the course of our contact with significant others’ (Taylor et al., 1994: 36). Therefore, misrecognition is expected to hinder construction of subjectivity and identity formation by producing long lasting impact on individual self-relations (Honneth, 1994, 2004; Ikäheimo et al., 2021; Laitinen, 2010).
In general, misrecognition diminishes the sense of self of individuals who do not feel recognised by others, deteriorating the quality of life at personal level and ultimately their relations with others. Within this perspective, Honneth (1995) argues that the effects of withholding recognition could be separated into three dimensions – each of them related to a different characteristic of personality and to a different dimension of recognition - which he designates as violation of the body, denial of rights and denigration of ways of life (Honneth, 1995, chapter 6).
First, violation of the body or physical abuse destroys self-confidence by depriving ‘one of the autonomous control of one’s own body’ (Honneth, 1995: 132–133). Second, systematic denial of rights and structural exclusion damage self-respect (which refers to the capacity of being a morally responsible autonomous agent) as this implies ‘that he or she is not being accorded the same degree of moral responsibility as other members of society’ (Honneth, 1995: 133). Finally, experiencing social denigration (Honneth, 1995: 129) or devaluation of individual ways of life and beliefs is detrimental to personal self-esteem: ‘it robs the subjects in question of every opportunity to attribute social value to their own abilities’ (Honneth, 1995: 134) and to receive social approval.
Massive violations of human rights are archetypical of large-scale misrecognition exhibiting all types of inadequate responsiveness to accepted normative values. 8 In such cases, significant numbers of people, specifically victimised individuals and collectives, experience material and moral injuries through physical violence, social exclusion, and feelings of been humiliated, ignored, or objectified (Halbertal, 2015; Haldemann, 2008). In short they are treated with less respect than they (ideally) deserve as persons and are denied participation in social life as equal members.
For victims of gross violations of human rights the consequences of misrecognition, in any of the forms previously described, are equally manifold. Recurrently victimised persons feel demoralised, their self-esteem as worthy individuals is eroded, even contemplating ideas of guilt. By self-limiting social contacts to avoid any confrontation with those who do not recognise them, these persons are deprived of a support network and thrown into social ostracism (Cepeda and Girón, 2005), losing the necessary social interactions for self-affirmation. Furthermore, to survive and function within their society, victims’ personal agency is burdened as they are commonly forced to act based on external constraints (fear, desperation, need) and not only on their own autonomous considerations (Tietjens, 2016). For instance, choosing a place to live, a school for children, a particular occupation, or even friends or partners are decisions highly influenced by how victims feel others perceive them, making them lose some sort of control over their own life. 9
For those claiming to have suffered violations of their human rights, obtaining legal recognition of their condition as victims of those crimes does not seem to completely fulfil their demands for recognition (Favre et al., 2021; Robins, 2013), even more taking into account that in cases of gross violations of human rights legal responses should go beyond securing access to procedural justice. 10
Often victimised people crave for something more substantial than a legal response (Rauschenbach and Scalia, 2008). Vindication, validation, empowerment, truth, and social respect represent the kind of recognition many victims may also want (Favre et al., 2021). In this way, recognition refers to receiving certain kind of treatment which is not different from the treatment that every person should receive due to their inherent dignity.
Considering the previous remarks, victims of human rights violations would benefit from both (1) legal recognition qua victims, to be able to claim their rights and participate in civil life under conditions of equality; and (2) social recognition qua persons in order to interact with others on the basis of moral equality, be treated with the respect demanded by that status, and preserve their individual subjectivity.
Being recognised as a victim is not the same as being recognised as a person. The first possibility is narrower and produces limited responses in terms of how those recognised as victims are treated. Being recognised as a victim triggers the treatment reserved to victims and victims only, as may be bestowing some specific rights or granting some social benefits. In contrast, those who do not receive such recognition do not have those ‘perks’. Such a distinction is not trivial, it is a reality that many people claiming to be victims are not recognised as such either because they do not conform to a certain legal definition of victim, so they are not identified as such, or because they are part of a legal system which does not acknowledge any legal responsibility for victimhood, or simply due to lack of material and political resources to respond adequately to widespread victimisation.
The alternative, being recognised as a person, allows responses beyond the legal and political spheres (without excluding them) and it has a wider applicability since it alludes not just to victimised people but to any person.
Promoting recognition among members of society is particularly relevant in transitional contexts, meaning situations in which societies try to overcome the consequences of massive wrongdoing. All those mentioned forms of misrecognition are often legally, politically, and socially endorsed by discriminatory laws, oppressive political systems, or stigmatising social practices in such a way that they do not only fuel violations but they could also persist during transitional periods. In this regard, Haldemann maintains that One misses an important part of the story in the context of collective and systematic wrongs if one fails to see the significance of moral recognition for the victims of those wrongs (Haldemann 2008: 681).
Nevertheless, transitional strategies often prioritise legal recognition of victimised individuals over interpersonal recognition among citizens, leaving important moral injuries caused by misrecognition unattended.
Essentially, the process of recognising victims of human rights abuses does not differ from recognising anyone else. Victimised people are not a different kind of person but persons with a distinctive life experience and that particular experience has normative relevance in as much as it shows how a person should not be treated. Hence to grant full recognition to victimised people, after they are identified as persons, the potential recogniser must judge that treatment as wrong. This amounts to acknowledging the normative relevance of misrecognition; and consequently responding in the opposite way by asserting the equal moral status of the victimised person and treating her according to that status.
Within the context at stake, any recognitive relation involving victimised persons departs from a point at which certain aspects of personhood are undermined by social imaginaries about victimisation. For instance, ideas of victimhood are often associated with images of suffering, helplessness, deprivation, destruction, and the like. This kind of association has several consequences.
To begin with, suffering is not exclusive to victims of atrocities, it is a fundamental human experience. Even combatants or perpetrators of violence experience great suffering in conflict-related situations. Naming suffering as the main characteristic of victimhood trivialises the notion of victim, overlooking the multidimensional effects of victimising experiences, and highlights the vulnerability of victims to the detriment of their agentic capability.
Second, focusing on suffering attaches a label of innocence to the concept of victim which opens the door for considering guilty or deserving victims. In that way, those who do not appear in constant anguish or in a state of despair may be excluded from the category of victims, which overlooks their condition as rights bearers and disregards their experience of misrecognition.
Third, the usual response to suffering is pity or compassion at most, that not necessarily rules out some sort of respectful treatment but it establishes an asymmetrical relation since: The pitier implicitly assumes that she is inherently superior to the person she is pitying. Her pity is formed from a protected standpoint, as if she were immune to trouble and distress (Margalit, 1996: 234).
This position blurs the possibility of an interaction based on equal moral standing. What is normative and legally relevant is not the suffering itself but the circumstances surrounding that suffering and the experience of misrecognition by virtue of it.
Mediated recognition
Conventional approaches consider recognition as dyadic interpersonal interactions. This perspective reduces recognitive relations to interactions between two different subjects with some implicit level of proximity, mostly to face-to-face encounters (Driessens and Nærland, 2022).
Theoretically, it could be possible to have that kind of relations within very small communities where everybody can interact with everybody; however, the reality of current societies does not correspond to that image. In many cases, a personal encounter is not indispensable for someone to feel recognised by others nor for someone to discern the treatment deserved by others and to act accordingly. The nature of human interactions in the social space makes it possible to affect others without direct contact or even physical proximity.
Moving on, Deranty argues that recognition is one of many forms of interaction of human subjects with their environment, thus reducing it to interpersonal ones is an abstraction that ignores other ways of interaction ‘materially mediated and so depend[ent] on ‘objectual’ or ‘material’ reality’, Deranty (2009: 4), by which individuals and collectives shape their identities and define themselves in society. Taking this into account allows to consider that recognitive relations could also be expressed or potentiated by ‘objects, public and private spaces, and so on’ (Deranty 2009: 474).
Contemporary literature on recognition has embraced new ideas to respond to the limitations of established models. One example is extending recognitive relationships beyond personal interactions between pairs of subjects by introducing the concept of mediated recognition. In a mediated recognitive relation: [A] third party performs a mediating role between two distinct parties that, for some reason or another, do not initially recognize each other in some desired or appropriate way (Koskinen, 2019: 34).
The mediator’s role is to facilitate recognitive attitudes between the other two parties by acting as an intermediate step in the relation. The first step is that A and B separately recognise C, the mediator, as a person, as a normative framework, as an institution, as a set of values, or as any other recognisable entity (Koskinen, 2017). Then, mediated recognition occurs when A can recognise B via C, even if A does not recognise B directly (Koskinen, 2017: 76). The parties involved do not need to be two different individuals, they could be groups or institutions. The third party, also not necessarily a person, should have some shared acceptance or, more properly, it should be recognised by the other two, to actually guide the process in a desirable direction.
Mediation is crucial when direct interaction is not possible or when being possible, it is overloaded with subjective contents that impede the recognitive relation to flow. With this I mean a situation in which preconceived ideas about the other inhibit identification or acknowledgement. An example of that could be upholding blaming narratives to justify violence against certain individuals or groups, a common situation in contexts of widespread violence. If you concur with those kind of ideas then when a person is killed, tortured, forcibly displaced, or raped you probably feel shocked for those atrocious acts but – and here it comes the flaw of the argument – you still think that there must be a reason for it (in Latin American countries they would say por algo ser será). Either the attacked person was a criminal, a member of a guerrilla group, was in dubious company, came from a bad zone, or was dressing provocatively. Any of those reasons justify and legitimise immoral actions and consequently vitiate any recognitive relation. In such cases you identify those as persons but by withholding acknowledgement of the normative relevance of a victimising experience you fail to express full recognition.
The kind of situation just described could happen not only between individuals but among groups. For instance, when divergent ethical, religious, or political views are confronted, it is hard to offer full recognition to the other unless the parties find some common ground; a mediating element can point to that common ground or just lead the parties to it. Mediation in such contexts involves facilitating identification and acknowledgement of persons in order to provide motivation for full recognition despite their different views, still the response given to such motivation depends on how a potential recogniser decides to act towards a potential recognisee. One could say that giving full recognition when a mediating factor intervenes requires a proper disposition of the parties.
Scholars have explored the mediating role of different entities such as legal systems, political institutions, religious authorities, conceptual frameworks (Koskinen, 2017, 2019; Laitinen, 2010), and media and communication technologies (Cottle, 2007; Dahl and Nærland, 2022; Driessens and Nærland, 2022). Here, I am suggesting a different mediator in recognitive relations involving victimised people: artworks.
Artworks as mediators in recognition
Benefits of art created by victims of human rights violations, for victims, or with victims (both as part of the creative process or as the substance of it), have been the focus of growing scholarly attention. Some declare that art could have communicability functions in as much as it is possible to employ it to convey certain experience or to generate certain reflection about some experience (Ghosh, 1987; Stroud, 2007). But unlike communication processes art could express emotional and cognitive contents without transmitting a concrete and definite message precisely because there are some aspects of human experience that are beyond the reach of purely linguistic communication.
Beyond those general characteristics, specific artworks embracing the creative potential of human experiences could act as ‘catalyst and medium for social connection’ (Metais, 2019) ‘serving to link individuals and human groups together’ (Bourriaud, 2002: 19), which in turn favours ethical encounters with the other. These qualities could make those pieces of art suitable mediators in recognitive relations concerning victimised persons in as much as they could create symbolic encounters among different individuals to stimulate recognitive attitudes.
The three artworks I am presenting now explore experiences of victimhood in the context of Colombian society in different times, places, and circumstances. Their creators approach those experiences using similar but different expressive strategies. Through these, spectators can engage with the other represented there, the victimised, without having a direct interaction. Such aesthetic engagement may generate cognitive and emotional reactions, potentially giving spectators elements for identifying victims as persons and more importantly for acknowledging the normative value of their experience.
Aliento: breathing for the other
Aliento (Breath) is a work by artist Oscar Muñoz presented for the first time in 1995. The installation presents a series of 10 well-polished discs, treated with serigraphic printing and put at average eye level on a clean wall. At first sight they look like mirrors so if you get close, you see your own reflection, but if you get close enough for your breath to fog the surface, a sepia image of another person, a dead person, inscribed in your own reflection becomes visible for as long as your breath endures. 11
Since there are no names to match with the faces nor details about the circumstances of their death, the face I awake with my breath is the face of no one. However, taking into account that just in 1995 – when the piece was inaugurated – between 15% and 24% of all deaths in Colombia were due to violent causes (Presidencia Colombia, 2009; Rodriguez et al., 2019) and between 1991 and 1995 there were more than 8,000 reported enforced disappearances (Mingorance and Arellana, 2019), there is a good chance that the face I am facing is the face of a victim. This is the first intriguing thought posed by Aliento: how did they die?
Due to the anonymity, the face could also belong to anyone, at least to anyone with death experience (meaning anyone who is dead); therefore the face stands not just for no one (as an anonymous someone with a specific experience) but at the same time for anyone, not just one with a similar experience. As a result, my relation with the singular no one whose face I summon in each mirror becomes a relation with the amorphous plurality of anyone who is the other (Levinas, 1999: 170).
The faces belong to no one and anyone but they are definitely other and not me. The realisation of such difference or, following Levinas’ theory, ‘the discovery of such absolute exteriority’ (Drwiega, 2018: 177) allows Aliento’s visitors to individually identify as oneself through the acceptance or identification of that other in the mirrors. The other is there, summoned by me but outside me, it has its own personal identity which despite being unknown to me is not the same as mine.
Aliento establishes a peculiar relation between us, the other and me, in such a way that only through my actions can the other gain some presence (Graham, 2012). My breath turns into an activation mechanism which gives that other some momentary existence although the other no longer exists (it is dead). Through this paradox, I somehow become responsible for the other (Acosta, 2014: 88) and the other totally dependent on me, the only thing left to itself is its alterity: its condition of being different to myself. Again, awareness of this alterity means accepting the separate personhood of the other in the mirror.
‘I have access to the alterity of the other from the society I maintain with him, and not by quitting this relation in order to reflect on its terms’ (Levinas, 1991: 121), so I should breathe to keep the interaction going, to keep the faces showing. In doing so, to continue looking at the faces of those who are the other, I am making them, ‘and their lives and deaths, more real in our life-worlds’ (Graham, 2012: 70) and simultaneously unveiling their fragility, which is also a feature of a human person.
Although the faces are what allows the engagement with the other, they are just a footprint of what those were. Besides that, the only concreteness about those ethereal lives is the fact that they are all dead, so it is natural to keep wondering: who are they? What happened to them? Or even to ask ‘do I have the right to be? [a question that] expresses primarily the human in its care for the other’ (Levinas, 1999: 179).
The activation mechanism of Aliento is what may induce identification of the other as person; the subsequent questioning may lead visitors to acknowledge their moral responsibility towards the other which is consequential for the ethical response it may trigger: recognising that other.
Relicarios: pieces of the other
Relicarios (Reliquaries) is a creation of artist Erika Diettes exhibited for the first time in 2016. 12 In 2011 the artist started a project with relatives of disappeared people who travelled from several locations in northern Colombia to meet with her and donate treasured objects from their loved ones. As a result, she collected a myriad of quotidian objects including shoes, jewellery, combs, keys, identity cards, photographs, toys, watches, clothing, handwritten letters, religious symbols, toothbrushes, and many others. These objects either belonged to the person who disappeared, were gifts from them to their relatives, or just mementos of their previous relationships.
Diettes encapsulates the objects in separate containers made of a transparent rubber material in which the objects seem to float and are kept protected from the environment but visible and static. There is one for each of the disappeared, 165 in total, each of these yellowish jelly-looking bricks is a personalised reliquary.
A reliquary is a container for storing religious relics or for keeping precious objects. Since the middle ages Christians (and other religions too) have used intricate and luxurious designs to preserve and venerate body parts of holy figures or objects touched by them. Public exposure of religious reliquaries would allow ‘people to come into contact with the divine presence’ (Wisniewski, 2019: 144), if not by touching the relic at least by the sight of it. According to Hahn, for Christianity: one of the most important imaginary notions posited about saints is that, whether represented by whole bodies or fragments, they are fully present both in their relics and in heaven (Hahn, 2010: 299).
The souls of saints are thought to be alive in the relic so the reliquaries that guard the relics become a means to contact a holy person.
Diette’s reliquaries are simple and clean, but they keep the aura of sanctity of their religious referents. The items themselves have incommensurable value for the families who handed them over; they are tangible echoes of their loved ones but instead of bearing witness to absence these relics are, as sacred relics, pure presence (Sinardet, 2020): Each item has been chosen by the relatives for its ability to summon the deceased, and its participation in the exhibition intensifies that ability to conjure up him or her because it is asked, implicitly, to ‘stand for’ that person (Bell, 2020: 26).
Therefore, the presence embodied by the relics establishes a tangible link between the character they stand for and visitors to the installation, but also, I would say, they open a channel to connect with the family of the absent who have given the character of relics to otherwise insignificant objects.
Furthermore, by standing in for the disappeared the relics illustrate the very fact of enforced disappearance: a person vanishes and the only physical remains left are objects connected to her that testify about her passage through life. At the same time the reliquary expresses the non-ending struggle of the family behind, waiting for the reality of a body to mourn but hoping for a miraculous apparition to hug. In this way, from the start, Relicarios may facilitate acknowledgement of the victimising experience of enforced disappearance.
In a similar way to Aliento, Relicarios maintains anonymity but contrarily, it does not renounce individualisation. The lack of names labelling each reliquary, in my view, serves to keep away any idea of martyrdom attached to many Christian relics. Such an idea could reduce the persons represented to suffering beings without agency, just destined to suffer what they suffered, and the experience of disappearance to divine intervention without any human responsibility. What is more, the absence of names enables Relicarios, as a complete collection, to illustrate the magnitude of enforced disappearance in Colombia, an illustration reinforced by the physical display of Relicarios in the exhibit space. Another way to foster acknowledgement of the normative value of this kind of victimisation.
Reinforcing the previous point, visitors could notice that the reliquaries are meticulously arranged evoking the landscape drawn by tombs in a cemetery (Calle and Martínez, 2021: 458). The number of pieces and their repetition – remember that there are at least 165 reliquaries all with the same form, size, and colour – suggest the type of institutionalised graveyards where rows and rows of signposts mark the burial place of unidentified bodies or soldiers dead in wars. 13
The whole staging of Relicarios, from the material setting to the lighting and the way you must walk along the paths, renders the experience contemplative but not passive. Like observing tombstones, you need to bow your head or kneel down to appreciate their details, assuming ‘a position of humility, devotion and respect’ (Foster, 2021) which is basically adopting the attitude of a mourner (Bell, 2020: 27). Certainly, the people who left their relics in the artist’s care (and who often are present in the exhibition) are mourning the lives of their missing relatives. The mourning ambience reveals that you are indeed observing the experience of human persons and you identify those mourners as persons. Beyond simply identifying mourners, Relicarios invites you to join the mourning mood as a common grief (Pineda-Repizo, 2023) and start thinking that those lost lives deserve to be grieved and consequently were valuable (Butler, 2010; Dumm, 2008).
In addition, by contemplating the reliquaries and dwelling on their particularities you actively engage with the other who is embodied in each reliquary. One form of engagement arises from a sense of affinity between the viewer and the person portrayed, elicited through associations with the objects depicted. You may recognise yourself in the practice of treasuring objects belonging to loved ones – whether living or deceased – or you may encounter items that are personally familiar: a toothbrush similar to your own, a stuffed animal like one you or your child once had, or a photograph of an artist your mother also admired. As these objects serve as proxies for affective relationships, the experience of affinity may lead you to recognise the emotional capacities of the other, and thus to identify the other as a person. In Aliento you interact with an other, who despite showing his face, remains a complete mystery. In contrast, the other in Relicarios has no face, but reveals pieces of itself – you know with certainty that it is a desaparecido with a family (the people behind the reliquary). Each reliquary narrates a personal story, revealing some traits of that person who is absent, yet both the story and the person are incomplete. Simple curiosity for the unknown may impulse you to complete the story to unveil the missing details: who are these people? Where are they? What happened to them? What will happen? (Bernal, 2018). This line of enquiry, together with the shared mourning described above, may invite us to acknowledge the moral rupture enacted by enforced disappearance and to reflect on the social and legal responses given to this crime.
In summary, the affinity and presence that may be experienced in Relicarios may potentially lead to identify the other as a person, while the questions that could possibly arise from the experience may promote acknowledgement of the immoral treatment expressed by enforced disappearance.
Duelos: grieving for the other
Duelos (Mournings) is a video-installation, 14 created by artist Clemencia Echeverri and inaugurated in 2019 in Bogota as part of the first exhibition hosted in Fragmentos. 15 In this work, Echeverri offers her personal reflection on the endless mourning of families searching for their disappeared relatives, particularly those looking in La Escombrera, a construction waste dump in the city of Medellin. Especially during the 2000’s La Escombrera was used by various armed groups as a body disposal site (Giraldo, 2015; Naef, 2024; Rios -Oyola, 2021). According to official data of the Colombian Search Unit for Persons Reported Missing (UBPD in Spanish), at least 502 disappeared persons could be buried at this site although only two of the few human remains retrieved have been identified so far. 16
Duelos is a sensory saturated space. When you visit it, you enter inside a dark room with black and white images being projected under your feet and around you. All images appear simultaneously, but not always synchronically. The visual space is complemented by a chorus of guttural and mechanical sounds, murmurs, and human voices mumbling unintelligible phrases. The images show movement of demolition materials and a subjective camera following a truck transporting debris, all of that from different perspectives but ‘always slightly off center, thus producing a sense of anxiety and disorientation’ (Roca, 2019: 26). At a certain point the screens put you in the middle of the dump as if all the rubble that is now clearly audible was falling in your direction. Without any consent, you are put in the position of a body thrown and being buried under a pile of debris: [p]laced in the mouth of the pit [you] find [yourself] faced with a vacuum, faced with the vertigo of being there (Roca, 2019: 20).
At that point you may feel the need to get out of the darkness around you, to scream over the loudness; however there is no way out and your voice would be lost under the multiplicity of voices that cancel each other, so no one can find you there.
Through this immersion you experience your own vulnerability and impotence, which reproduces the experience of disappearance as a crime that, abusing the fragility of human bodies and disregarding the agency of people, silences and hides both the disappeared and their families. This first impression allows you to discern the nature of the experience of enforced disappearance and through that identify as persons those who have suffered it.
In Duelos, as in a covered mass grave, the bodies are not visually explicit but implicitly present through the powerful auditory stimuli that surrounds you (Roca, 2019: 26). You could figuratively hear the mass of bones deep under crying to be found, get out, and be one-out-of-the-mass again. Likewise, the soundscape also captures a different other, the living in the surface, as a desperate choir trying to find body remains to pull out, put a name on, and properly mourn for the one each of them lost.
In the mass grave where the dead cannot be found, the process of identification is interrupted and the victims’ faces become invisible. It is thus through the act of mourning that an echo of the identity of the person who has disappeared is made present (Medina, 2019: 83).
By immersing in Duelos you inadvertently participate in the collective mourning establishing a connection with both of those other whose voices are intertwined: the dead under the debris and the mourners in the periphery. Through this vivid process you may acknowledge the wrongness of the experience of the victimised, both the disappeared and their relatives.
Instead of presenting a veiled but discernible victimised other, Duelos confronts you with a discernible victimising experience of a multitude of others that you cannot individualise. Hence it is almost instinctive to wonder about those other: who are the disappeared in La Escombrera? Who are the ones looking for them?
Even though those questions are similar to the ones arising from the aesthetic experience in Aliento and Relicarios, Duelos also challenges visitors with additional subtleties.
The situation in La Escombrera is well known in Colombia; hence most visitors of Duelos are aware that ‘the bodies are there, hidden in plain sight, but they also know that it will be almost impossible to exhume them’ (Roca, 2019: 22). Despite being also informed about the conundrums of the situation, the families who believe their relatives are in La Escombrera have repeated their claims over and over again for more than fifteen years. In Echeverri’s (2019) ears their voices have configured some sort of voiceless grieving chorus metaphorically encircling the dumpster asking for help in their search without receiving any response. 17
With all of that, puzzling questions come to mind: how do you finish the endless lament? What could be done to find the absent? If they have not been found, where are they? Is it worth it to keep grieving for them?
The first questions relate to institutional responses to enforced disappearance but the last one asks for the political dimension of grief and mourning (Flores, 2019: 38) and the very value of a lost life.
In Butler’s terms ‘only under conditions in which the loss would matter does the value of the life appear. Thus, grievability is a presupposition for the life that matters’ (Butler, 2010: 29). Following this, we grieve those whose lives matter, those whose lives were considered worthy of being lived and are framed within a framework of recognisability. The families of La Escombrera certainly think of their relatives in that way, maybe you reach the same conclusion after sharing their grief in Duelos.
The uncomfortable immersive experience created by Duelos may motivate visitors to both identify victims of enforced disappearance as persons and acknowledge this crime as an immoral treatment of persons. The questioning attached to the experience may reinforce that acknowledgement.
Conclusion
Based on earlier research advancing the idea of mediated recognition as an additional party to facilitate recognitve relations, I proposed the possibility of artworks as mediators. I supported this descriptive proposal with the aesthetic analysis of three specific artworks created by artists who instead of using the suffering of others as an aesthetic element, employ the victimising experience of others as a creative substance.
The three pieces of art analysed here, although aesthetically consistent, present different visions of the other and use distinctive ways of engagement with visitors. Nevertheless, they have something in common, they challenge their visitors with unanswered questions about what they experience in each artwork (Malagón-Kurka, 2008; Vergara, 2021).
My analysis suggests that these artworks seem to perform well as mediators in recognitive relations involving victimised people; indeed they may potentially induce identification of personhood qualities and acknowledgement of victimising experiences (Foster, 2022), which is what is expected from a mediation in this context. This statement is supported by other evaluations of these artistic pieces remarking their value as unique opportunities to reflect and listen about Colombian victims (Orrego, 2018), to find a sense of unity around a common grief in the country (Navarrete, 2018), to create ethical ties between visitors and the disappeared (Virguez, 2017), or to generate a confronting experience for the audience (Atehortúa, 2019).
Despite the previous affirmations, it should be clarified that every visitor experiences art differently, the experiences described in this text are one possibility. Similarly, it is possible that other works of art – either applying similar or different aesthetic languages and strategies – may foster recognition in the way described; notwithstanding, as I indicated in the introduction, the aim of this paper was merely descriptive, so my conclusion cannot go further than the practical evidence at hand. Thus, it cannot be claimed that art in general can mediate in recognition processes, the only arguable conclusion is that some pieces of art show the potential for being mediators in recognitive relations involving victimised persons.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that although evaluating the impact of the artistic pieces on recognitive attitudes of visitors was out of the scope of this paper, I find very telling in this regard a response given by the artist Erika Diettes when she was asked about the impact of the 2016 Colombian Peace Agreement on the meaning of Relicarios: ‘I think there is a different education of the audience. I think it does exist after the agreement. Even while the agreement was being made there was education of the public. The audience was willing to watch these stories. It was no longer like when I started with Río abajo (a work of hers from 2008), when it was still almost dangerous to make an exhibition about enforced disappearance. I believe that as a society we are more open to look at these types of works’.
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The willingness she notices in current Colombian audiences might be interpreted as an attitudinal change but, as with any other social change, it cannot be attributed to one isolated event or action. The important thing is that the change is there and the disposition seems adequate to undertake actions that could lead to decreasing misrecognition of some members of society. Circulation of these kinds of artistic pieces may potentially reinforce legal, social, and political strategies for promoting recognition of victimised people in transitional contexts.
