Gota de agua [Drop of Water]

Benedit’s work of the early 1970s is concerned with the creation and observation of life in scientifically controlled environments. In Gota de agua, a single drop of water, seen through a magnifying glass, reflects and distorts the room around it, including the viewer. Although the work is not overtly political, it is hard not to read a more sinister meaning into this process of observation and control, given the political reality in Latin America in that decade. Like Luis Camnitzer’s prints in this same gallery, the tight perspective and suggestion of experimentation could be read as a response to the specter of torture.