incautados
The seven hundred photographs in Pablo Hare's series Incautados (Seized) document a corpus of books seized between 1980 and the mid-1990s from members and presumed members of the terrorist organisation Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) by Peru’s anti-terrorist police division (DIRCOTE for its name in Spanish).
The books were part of the so-called “DIRCOTE museum”: two rooms located in the police headquarters in the city of Lima. The museum houses objects seized by the police in various prisons and through anti-subversive operations. At the time when the photographs were taken (2014), the books were stored in a small attic room with no public access. The piece, which shows a kind of prototypical library of Latin American left-wing thought, provides an insight into the ideological foundations of the discourses that emerged in the local context during the second half of the XXth century.
The piece – which is subject to adaptations by the artist according to the exhibition context – also functions as a visual archive that can be consulted and used by academics, curators, artists and others. From an approach to the graphics that illustrate the covers to the identification of the main authors and political actors, Incautados allows us to investigate the history of the left, as well as the positions, processes and ideologies associated with the years of violent conflict in Peru.
Incautados (Seized), 2013-2016
700 fotografías
30x25 cms c/u
Inyección de tinta sobre papel de archivo baritado
Catálogo bibliográfico A3+
