The Dictator

An exhibition by

Hildegarde Duane & David Lamelas

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The exhibition “The Dictator” is the first presentation of Hildegarde Duane and David Lamelas in Guatemala, and includes two seminal works by the artists: The Dictator (1978) and Smart People (1991).

 

In The Dictator, David Lamelas adopts the persona of Colonel Ricardo García Perez, Latin American “dictator, poet, revolutionary” and deposed president of the imaginary island of Santa Ana. The video presents a fictional television news program titled Newsmakers, in which reporter Barbara Lopez (Hildegarde Duane), directs a series of hard-hitting questions at the Dictator himself about his attacks on the press and universities, his authoritarian policies, mistreatment of subversives, future plans, and the mysterious circumstances surrounding the deaths of his five wives. Yet, despite the incisive nature of the reporter’s interviewing style, the Dictator manages to spin them, and ultimately use the platform to reaffirm his ego and personality above everything else.

Both set and produced 13 years later, Smart People sees Lamelas and Duane as two homeless people of Latin American origin in Los Angeles... maybe the exiled and deposed president of Santa Ana and his sixth wife? In it, they push a shopping cart and scavenge discarded rubbish through a derelict part of downtown LA, conversing about their unusual lives; focusing on their days in power and their hard fall to poverty.

 

Despite their humorous and baffling tone, both The Dictator and Smart People critically examine serious concerns regarding Latin America’s history of military dictatorships and the US complicity in maintaining it as well as normalizing it through their media outlets.

 

After many dictatorships, coups, and depositions in the twentieth century, Guatemala continues to struggle against the long-term effects of these actions. Although officially considered a democracy, the country operates under a fraught political system in which nepotism, corruption, privilege and criminal impunity have become commonplace. In it, politics has been widely understood as a vehicle for personal enrichment as means to achieve insurmountable quotas of power.  

Although the last 3 years has seen some unprecedented victories in the fight against corruption and impunity, led by the Ministry of Public and CICIG (International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala), justice is still a major uphill battle. During the last year, the country has been witness to a new power play, in which the dark forces of the country are now attempting to shift and re-accommodate themselves to create nefarious alliances, amongst which #PactoDeCorruptos stands out. Corruption has taken hold of the Republic’s Presidency, the Congress (and it’s recently dissolved Board of Directors), the country’s different Ministries, the Supreme Court of Justice, the Port Authorities, SAT (the Tax Agency), and recently the National Police... all with the complicity of the nation’s economic elite.

 

In the face of Guatemala’s current political climate, these works are presented under a newfound light, reminding us that our “democracy” is as fragile as ever. And that, although dictatorships in our country seem a thing of the past, that we are in fact, not too far from it as we would like to believe.

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NuMu would like to thank the Berezdivin Collection for the generous loan of The Dictator.