Javier Arbona

   Luis sent new images to follow the progress of his Bhutto collages seen here last week. I also noticed one site that kindly linked to that post and called these collages “puzzles.” That word is very appropriate. As I was mentioning before, these works ask the viewer to try to follow a complex chain of causality; to try to piece together the true moments of U.S. power and influence. I understand from the last email that each collage pulls together context from a single newspaper. In such a way, it seems, these assemblages can reveal how a globally-reported event passes through the churn of class identity politics that each newspaper has. For instance, how does the British tabloid press contextualize this event as opposed to the establishment paper, El Pais, from Spain? Each collage also asks the viewer to move around it, as they are presented on the floor, over rugs that the artist brought from Afghanistan (of all places!) Of course, I find the fact that the rug is Afghan to be yet another allusion to recent U.S. interventions in the world, piecing together, like the puzzle that it is, the politics of culture with the politics of  war. One more collage below… {All collage photos courtesy of Luis Berrios-Negrón.}