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Dignidad | María Verónica San Martín

Dignidad is an artist’s book that documents a two years research-based project on Colonia Dignidad, which highlights the human rights violations committed in an isolated settlement established in the 1960s by Nazis in Chile before and after the dictatorship of Pinochet. Multiple crimes against humanity, including torture, execution, and child abuse were committed inside the enclave. Today the various criminal cases remain primarily unprosecuted and unresolved, due to the lack of political will, unresolved issues of legal jurisdiction, statute of limitations, the death of most of the principal offenders and the questionable legal status of the Colonia Dignidad which had been recently re-incorporated as an autonomous agricultural production center and renamed Villa Baviera. The project Dignidad has been exhibited national and internationally through a series of performances and installations since 2018 including the National Archive of Chile (SCL); Artist Space (NYC) ; Artist Television Access, ATA (SF,CA); The Meermanno Museum (ND) ; The Print Center (PA) and The Center for Book Arts (NYC)). The artist books gives account of this actions along with a historical and curatorial text of Chilean writer Matias Celedon in English and Spanish.

CategoriesArtists' Books, Chilean Artists, Expanded edition, Graphic Arts, Graphic works, Women TagMaría Verónica San Martín

“I define this artist’s book as a political abstraction, which refers to the history of Colonia Dignidad through the construction and deconstruction of symbols of power. The spaces of segregation and repression can be imagined spatially and conceptually through the architecture of the bunkers of the Colonia Dignidad period. The physical transformation of the sculpture manifests as the history’s relevance and resonance of the ideologies evoked by symbols and spaces”

Technical Specifications

Author: MarÍa Verónica San Martín

Techniques: photo lithography, photography, exhibition catalogues for first ten copies.

Format: fold and unfold structure, handmade box with hot stamp and photography.

Publisher: self-publication

Dimensions: 28,5 x 28,5 x 5 cm closed; 83 x 83 cm opened.

Print run: 50

Language: Spanish / English

Collections: Asociación por la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos Colonia Dignidad, Chile; Iberoamerikanische Institute, Berlín, Alemania; Rutgers University New Brunswick, NJ, EEUU.

Year of publication: 2019

Weight	2 kg
Dimensions	54 × 34 × 9 cm

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About the author

María Verónica San Martín (b. 1981, Santiago, Chile) is a New York-based artist working in printmaking, artists books, installation, sculpture, and performance. She was a studio artist at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, NYC, an artist-in-residence at Art OMI, Ghent, NY and a Scholar at The Center for Book Arts in NYC. San Martín addresses memory as a pivotal factor for the understanding of the neoliberal, globalized present, turning recently to the subject matter of the Chilean dictatorship’s violence (1973-1990), vis-à-vis the United States and Nazism’s involvement in that violence. She has had solo and group exhibitions in the United States, Chile and the Netherlands.

San Martin has been performing and lecturing her Moving Memorial series and Dignidad project at international museums, galleries, and public libraries and schools since 2016. She was recently awarded with two Fondart grants from the National Council for the Culture and the Arts of Chile. Her work is part of more than 50 collections including the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the MET, NYC, the Walker Art Center, MN, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, among others.