Luis Camnitzer
Her fragrance lingered on ("From the Uruguayan Torture" series)
1983
Four-color photo etching
75 cm x 55 cm (29 1/2 in. x 21 5/8 in.)
Archer M. Huntington Museum Fund, 1992

Luis Camnitzer is one of the most sophisticated artists on the international scene analyzing political issues through Conceptual art practices. Following his move to New York in 1964 from his adopted country of Uruguay, Camnitzer co-founded the New York Graphic Workshop with Liliana Porter and José Guillermo Castillo. Much of Camnitzer's career since that time has focused on a questioning of the print medium and on a political and ethical analysis of art and its role in society. In 1983 he produced one of his most significant print series, Uruguayan Torture, in response to the torture being carried out by Uruguay's military government. The series consists of thirty-five photo etchings that juxtapose photographs of the artist's own body and various everyday items with text. The resulting combination is disquieting and eerie, making allusions to torture without ever being explicit. Through this elliptical reference, Camnitzer avoided either the hysterical denunciation or the preachy didacticism of so much "political" art in favor of a complicated and nuanced image that forces the viewer to explore his or her own reactions and assumptions.