Lonquén, which in Mapudungún means ‘below,’ is simultaneously the name of a town, a tragedy, and an exhibition. But this simultaneity, this depth, rather than making Lonquén clear, renders it diffuse and elusive. This is both its virtue and its trap. Because Lonquén, the rural town in the commune of Talagante, was the site of the tragic death (1973) and discovery (1978) of the bodies of fifteen men murdered by the military government during the dictatorship, which in turn gave rise to Lonquén (1989), Gonzalo Díaz’s now canonical exhibition at the Ojo de Buey gallery. The years that mark the shifts between each of these places and events are not in vain either. They are determined by a certain delay that contributes to generating an impossible memory.

Through an analysis of the performance Diré tu nombre (I Will Say Your Name, 1989), which closed Díaz’s exhibition in 1989, researcher Ariel Florencia Richards seeks to find a way around this impossibility. She considers that by destroying part of the work with a hammer and verbalising the names of the disappeared (who later reappeared and disappeared again), it was possible to open up, albeit temporarily, an unexpected space for mourning and even for the beginnings of reparation.