In Memory
Urban Intervention in the City of Rosario
During the military dictatorship in Argentina, Fernando Traverso worked in the resistance until he was forced to go into exile. Bicycles were a common form of travel for members of the resistance. An abandoned bicycle was often the first sign that its owner had been kidnapped, or disappeared.
Three-hundred-and-fifty citizens of Rosario were disappeared during the Dirty War, as it was known in Argentina. Traverso spray-painted that same number of bicycle images throughout the city of Rosario, acting after midnight or at noon when most residents were in their homes for the noon meal and a siesta.
According to the artist, "Walking through the streets of Rosario and seeing a bicycle leaning against a wall does not seem strange. Except, when one gets closer one can tell that it’s the black silhouette of a bicycle that once was in that same spot, in some other spot, or maybe nowhere."
The many painted bicycles become shadows, or memories of kidnappings, of disappearances. The silhouette of the bicycle is the metaphor of absence. As the Tao says,”its not only the contour, but the emptiness too that allows reality to attain an ultimate meaning.”
Traverso was a member of the resistance to the military dictatorship in Argentina. Twenty-nine of his friends disappeared. Often the first evidence that someone had been taken was the discovery of their abandoned bicycle, the preferred means of transportation by the resistance. Gradually abandoned bicycles became common in Rosario. The artist made the work in homage to his disappeared colleagues.
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