Aníbal López, or A-1 53167 | Guatemalan
30 de Junio | 2000
In 2001 at the 49th Venice Biennale, he exhibited photographs from a 2000 action in which he scattered the contents of ten large bags of coal across the main boulevard in the center of Guatemala City where a military parade was to take place. The action was intended to remind the military of the crimes and massacres it committed against the country’s citizens during the 36-year civil war when more than 200 000 civilians were killed - mostly members of the indigenous Maya Indian community. The military committed human rights abuses including some acts that have been judged to be genocide, as documented by Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú and others.
In an interview with Biennale organizers, the artist stated,
"There is a close relationship namely, between the coal, the massacres, and the military, because this material can always be found in the mass graves. In most cases, houses and corpses are burned. I knew that the coal would be cleared away before the parade. I scattered it at about two o'clock in the morning, and at seven o'clock it had already been removed. But there were still traces left. I wanted the military to walk over these traces, and to be able to take photos of the marching army. Since I work with signs that have somehow established themselves, in this case the coal that points to the massacres and the mass graves, I refer with the action to existing problems, without becoming too obvious. It wasn’t my intention for the spectators to perceive these signs, but rather that the military itself should notice them.“
