Olga Marín Arango’s article, “Memorias patrióticas de un voyerista” [Patriotic Memoirs of a Voyeur] was published on November 21, 1997, in the “Cultura/Espectáculos” [Culture and Entertainment] section of the Bogotá newspaper El Espectador. It was both a review of and a promotional piece for En la punta de la lengua [On the Tip of My Tongue] (1997), the exhibition of works by the artist Rodrigo Facundo. The exhibition was presented that month at the Galería Santa Fe at the Bogotá planetarium as part of the second Luis Caballero Prize. The exhibition, which was among those that received a special jury mention, consisted of an installation of a number of plastic objects that Facundo built to use as both light boxes and projectors. Each object was thus used as a frame for a photograph that was repeatedly projected along with other still photos. The installation also included cylinders, which like zoetropes, projected images of historical caricatures of the Colombian coat of arms. The photographs used in the installation were from the early years of the century; Facundo had found them in the photo archives of Cromos magazine and the archive of a photographer who had been active during that period. This document describes Facundo’s exhibition as an attempt to tap into Colombia’s collective memory that like a flashback, transports the viewer from the present to an anonymous yet familiar past. This process was inspired by a method invented by the classical Greek poet Simonides of Ceos who developed a system for memorizing speeches based on associations with architectural spaces. Facundo, in turn, uses stereoscopic photographs.     

“Memorias patrióticas de un voyerista” [Patriotic Memoirs of a Voyeur] is an important document that explains how En la punta de la lengua [On the Tip of My Tongue] (1997)—the installation produced by the Colombian artist Rodrigo Facundo (b. 1958) for the second Luis Caballero Prize—was viewed and promoted in the media as an indisputable, deliberate, and anonymous portrait of the Colombian people in the twentieth century. The document provides an excellent description of the artifacts included in the exhibition, and highlights the aesthetic and formal values involved in the deliberate choice of technical media used to create the project, namely photography and video that, according to the article, are the media that have had the greatest impact on art and everyday life in the twentieth century. Though the document quotes the artist’s remarks concerning the research that is the underpinning of the installation, his statements are treated as anecdotes and are therefore insufficient to establish a direct link between Facundo’s historical discourse and the mnemonic principles proposed by Simonides. This shortcoming of the article is of particular interest because—since this was a project installed and recognized at the Luis Caballero Prize—the architecture and environment at the Galería Santa Fe are of particular importance in terms of the contest guidelines and formulations [see doc. no. 1098466].

It is important to point out that Facundo’s installation—that was created with fragmentary photographs and video loops taken in various parts of Colombia and at different periods in the country’s history and put together in order to tell an anonymous history of the Colombian people—was an intrinsic part of Colombia’s artistic output in the 1990s. Several influences had been at work during that period, including the Postmodern theories of the French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard concerning the construction of discourses that transform the artist into a critical, multifaceted agent; the reconceptualizing of the installation based on the materiality and historical charge that both objects and images absorb from the time and space they occupied; and finally, the reclamation or reconstruction of a national collective memory as part of its heritage. These ideas were endorsed by public policies through events sponsored by the Salón Nacional and the regional artists’ salons (1997), which were inspired by the basic concept of “Arte y memoria” [Art and Memory]. Attention should also be drawn to Olga Marín Arango’s denunciation of the Colombian art environment as a ghetto that is closed to those who know nothing about art. She does, however, applaud Facundo’s installation that she says seeks “to generate a language that people will find easier to understand.” This would become a standard theme discussed in the media in later years. 

Olga Marín Arango, social communicator and journalist, has held positions as editor of the cultural section of the newspaper El Espectador, director of the National University of Colombia’s radio station (2005), and editorial coordinator at the Colombian Ministry of Education (2008).  

The Colombian artist Rodrigo Facundo is a graduate of the Universidad de los Andes, and earned his Master of Arts degree at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (IL). His work received a special mention for the second Luis Caballero Prize (1997) and the V Salón Regional [Fifth Regional Salon], Bogotá region, in 1998. He is currently (2010) a teacher at the Arts Faculty of the Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá.