Construcción discursiva de la violencia y configuración de marcos de ausencia y de guerra en réquiem NN de Juan Manuel Echavarría

Abstract

Art is presented as an alternative to language in a context of extreme violence, taking possession of memory, of a reality that confronts us with the most ominous aspect of human nature. Requiem NN by Juan Manuel Echavarría, is an artwork that confronts the viewer with horror through beauty. Parting from the concept of framework, this paper attempts to examine the work of art as an instrument of language to represent the emptiness, investigating how, from the plasticity of the work art emerges the potential to construct a symbolic object, which generates a dialogue between the mourning of the people as presented in the artwork, and those of its spectator, a tool that allows access to individual losses through the narrations of others, putting the viewer in touch with their own affections, evidencing the existence of a framework that determines which lives will be mourned and which will not. This text studies how Réquiem NN by Juan Manuel Echavarría is re-presented by cultural journalism, at different moments and contexts of exhibition; revealing the prevalence of the context over the content of the artwork.