(They) Died In Poverty, from Untitled Portfolio

Edgardo Antonio Vigo, an Argentine artist, poet, conceptualist, and graphic designer, was best known for his participation in the international Mail art movement. In tandem with his Mail art works, which involve the participation of a recipient, he published magazines and editions that promoted an accessible, democratized art in place of the unique and valuable art object. This portfolio is organized as an unbound book and invites the viewer to arrange its pages in any order. A careful and self-aware archivist of his own work, Vigo composed this portfolio as a cross-section of the themes and media that appear throughout his overlapping practices, including wordplay, collage, woodblock prints, and rubber stamps. One page references the nonsense term “Merz”— invented by the German artist Kurt Schwitters to describe collages made from scavenged scrap materials—and reveals the importance of Dada art to Vigo’s work. Other pages allude to Argentina’s dictatorship of the 1970s, during which Vigo’s son, Abel Luis “Palomo” Vigo, was “disappeared” by the military. In response, Vigo used Mail art networks to campaign for the return of his missing son. Woodcut and rubber-stamp portraits of Palomo appear on several pages, accompanied by the date of his kidnapping or the slogan “set Palomo free.”