Reparative Reenactment: Yael Bartana’s "Monumento a la ausencia" in Mexico City

The student movement of 1968 in Mexico City exuberantly reimaged what care could be. Artists created posters and protest banners calling for an end to police brutality and the release of political prisoners. The movement’s reparative aims were cut short when government agents fired on peaceful protestors, killing dozens.

To commemorate the movement and the massacre on its 50^th anniversary, Israeli artist Yael Bartana collaborated with survivors and their family members to create the Monumento a la ausencia (Absence Monument). Participants were invited to run through a plaza of wet cement. The resulting footprints, with their erratic, intersecting paths, evoked the chaos of the massacre. I argue that Bartana’s piece should be conceptualized beyond just these antimonumental traces in cement. The intergenerational “reenactment” that happened during the creation of the work reclaimed the Student Movement’s legacy of care. Participants sipped coffee together and washed cement off each other’s shoes in intimate, quotidian moments of connection. Similarly, the resulting anti-monument invites visitors to step into their footprints, making the memory of 1968 ongoing, tactile, and welcoming. In these ways, the creation of the Absence Monument —and its perpetual reactivation—unite various generations in embodied acts of care.