Origins, Rations, Extractions at TXST

Origins, Rations, Extractions at TXST

Mar 19–Aug 26, 2018

March 19 – August 26, 2018
Texas State University, Sabinal Photo Gallery

Featuring Paula Luttringer

A satellite version of our exhibition Origins, Rations, Extractions is on view at Texas State University’s Sabinal Photo Hall Gallery. Learn more about the Photography Department at Texas State. Visit the exhibition at 205 Pleasant St, San Marcos, Texas, TX 78666. Call (512) 245-2611 for gallery hours and parking instructions.

Origins, Rations, Extractions focuses on an under-observed example of the South American government’s effects on place and people. Argentinian photographer Paula Luttringer was born in 1955 and produces work focused on the history of her native country and lives of those disenfranchised and victimized by its political powers. In 1977 Luttringer experienced this firsthand when she was kidnapped and held in a secret detention center during the Argentine military war (1976-1983) and was held as a political prisoner in one of the more than 520 secret detention centers in Argentina. Leaving Argentina immediately after her release she fled to Uruguay and then Brazil, before going to France. She did not return to Argentina until 1995, when she began using photography to interpret her experience there and as an approach to recovery.

“I am a visual artist creating images related to my experience as a survivor of political violence. My work arises from an era in history that is specific to Argentina but has features in common with political violence wherever it erupts in the world.

Survivors of political violence have blank spaces in our memories, and sometimes we get unexpected flashes of memory. The flashes are not words but images, mental pictures. They don’t come when we want them to come. We can’t erase the mental pictures that arrive, and we can’t change them. If we try to not see them, they insist. The flashes arrive when we are relaxed, having good moments in our lives. They appear when we are working on other things, when we are not expecting them. These flashes are images that exist in our minds and cannot be shared with anyone.

Photography allows me to create images that suggest what is in my mind. The photographs are not illustrations of what is in my mind, but they are reminders, suggestions. Unlike flashes of memory, photographic images can be shared with others. When I create photographic images, I am finding a way to keep the past which was not recorded, the past which was hidden, the past which intrudes into the present. And so photography is part of my quest to explore my gaps in memory, my memories, and those unexpected flashes of memory.”

Paula Luttringer’s photographs in Origins, Rations, Extractions are selections from two bodies of work Lingnum Mortuum and Entrevero.

More information HERE.