Para vestir (Pintura aeropostal núm. 56) [To Dress (Airmail Painting no. 56) ]

In 1983, in response to the censorship and repression of the military dictatorship in Chile and the isolation of the artistic community, Eugenio Dittborn created what he called “airmail paintings.” In them, Dittborn combined various media, including photo-silkscreen, drawing, painting, and collage. The brown paper he chose as his support could easily be folded, stuffed into envelopes, and circulated through the mail, both signifying the distance between Chile and the rest of the world and the conceptual strategies of Mail Art to bridge that gap. The recycled images he often featured, taken from sources such as police files and the media, addressed the plight of marginalized people, ranging from petty criminals to victims of state violence. In this work, Dittborn compares the tragedy of the poor who were forced into a life of petty crime to the widespread devastation left by the many earthquakes that plague that region.