Argentinian Judge Closes Leon Ferrari Art Show

http://www.leonferrari.com.ar/exposiciones/retrospectiva/index.htm&hl=en&lr=&sa=G

Bugler, Sunday 19 of December of 2004

TRIGGER

Catholicism 1, freedom of expression 0

by Marcelo To Moreno

<mailto:mmoreno [at] clarin.com> <mailto:mmoreno [at] clarin.com>
mmoreno [at] clarin.com <mailto:mmoreno [at] clarin.com> <mailto:mmoreno [at] clarin.com>



The controversial expanded one by the sample of the artist Leon Ferrari
in the Cultural Center Recoleta has finished, within everything, well.
That is to say, by the route of the law. A judge understood that the
works of art exposed there injured "the religious feelings of the
enormous majority of the inhabitants of this city". For that reason she
ordered his "preventive supensión", making place to a resource of
shelter of the Association Christ Priest.

Indeed the priest Xavier Rykeboer, empowered of that association,
emphasized that "we did not question the work of Ferrari but that the
State welcomes it". The Buenosairean secretary of Culture, Gustavo
Lopez, assured that the Government had "to promote the culture, to give
space and to guarantee the freedom of expression, without exerting
previous censorship". For that reason, tomorrow he will appeal.

But since the sample was opened, which demanded the Church was that the
Government of the City closed the exhibition. That is to say, that
exerted the censorship of State. One is an extensive catholic tradition.
Already in the regime de facto of Farrell, by years 40, it obtained that
the letters changed to him to the tangos because considered lunfardo
irreverent . And at times of the autocracy of Onganía, it obtained that
the Bomarzo opera was prohibited and the Institute I gave Tella, while
pious hands handled the scissors whereupon the films of Bergman were
clipped. Later, during the military dictatorship, monsignor Bonamín,
military vicar, blessed the pyres that general Menéndez ignited. There,
in the same fire, the texts of Marx were burned with those of Luis
Gusmán and with treaties of mathematical modern .

Now nothing of this happened. The State defended the freedom of artistic
expression and only the intervention of judge Elena Liberatori
(paradoxical of a case and a last name) determined the closing. Not the
pressures, not them threats, not the vandalism against works. Everything
within the law. As it must.

Only which whenever it is silenced an art work is closed, sometimes
imperceptibly , a door of the soul.



EXHIBITIONS : "Retrospective: Works 1954-2004"

Regarding Torture

by Leon Ferrari

I would like to explain that the works currently on exhibit in the
Centro Cultural Recoleta that are most critical of the Church are just
one way of expressing an opinion regarding torture.

1) Beginning with the Gospels and along through to the Churchâ¬"s
official catechism, Christianity has announced that the souls of those
who die in mortal sin â¬and later on, their resurrected bodies⬠are
tortured in Hell. The idea of punishing those who are different runs
throughout our history and has given rise to different exterminations:
native peoples, Jews, witches, Vietnamese or Iraqis.

2) The existence of this place where millions of souls suffer has been
illustrated and exalted by the Westâ¬"s great artists: Michelangelo,
Giotto, Fra Angelico, etc.

3) In order to express an opinion regarding the meaning of these
aesthetically beautiful paintings, regarding these promised torments, I
exhibited a work in the Museu de Arte Moderno in São Paulo, Brazil,
that consisted of a cage containing pigeons defecating onto a
reproduction of Michelangeloâ¬"s Final Judgment. A similar installation
was shown in the Centro Cultural Recoleta, as well as in other museums
abroad.

4) Given that the Hells painted by Christianityâ¬"s artists do not
generate any reaction that condemns the torture applied to people like
us, I thought that one way to point out the cruelty they contain and to
be able to bring viewers to comprehend the reality of this
characteristic of Western culture, was to make copies of those Hells,
but replace the human beings with the saints and virgins who created or
disseminated them.

5) This idea produces an unusual reaction on the part of Church: after
centuries of disseminating and sustaining painted Hells in their
churches that show people like us being tortured, they take offense and
reject the Hells where those who suffer are pieces made of plaster and
plastic. I hope that with time, the Church will extend its rejection to
the tortures painted by Hieronymus Bosch.

6) I should clarify that according to my criteria, the figurines sold in
shops selling religious items are not the true figures of Jesus and the
Virgin, but representations of the characters described by the creators
of Christianity. Based on the Gospels themselves, it can be deduced that
a person with Socialist ideas, concerned with the poor and advising us
to love thy neighbor, such as Jesus is described as having been, cannot
menace this same neighbor with torture.

7) During two thousand years Hell has remained unchanged, but a short
while ago the Pope modified it, saying that it is not a fiery place, but
that the absence of God generates suffering that is comparable to
earthly anguish. Physical suffering is replaced with spiritual torment.

8) This power, held by the Pope, to modify evangelical punishmentâ¬"s
forms or systems, leads me to assume that he could resolve the
contradiction between supporting human rights on Earth and violating
them in the great beyond, by declaring that the Church has once again
committed an error, that Hell does not exist and that no one is or will
be punished.

9) My intention has not been to irritate those believers who do not
believe in the land of devils. My works are aimed toward the Church and
those who accompany it in its menace of punishment for so-called
â¬Ssinnersâ¬?.

10) I would also like to clarify that these opinions are not a novelty.
The same and similar opinions regarding the Church and religion have
previously been expressed by Bertrand Russell, Arnold J. Toynbee,
Sigmund Freud, Noam Chomsky, Aldous Huxley, Saramago and Almod̸var,
among others.

11) In addition to offensive drawings and paintings, the show also
contains works that refer to other topics: anti-Semitism, homosexuality,
the link between victims of AIDS and campaigns against condoms, the
so-called Proceso (ideological persecution including systematic capture,
torture and assassination carried out during the mid-â¬Ü70s and early
â¬Ü80s under the military dictatorship in Argentina), the wars against
Vietnam and Iraq, the Conquest of America, the Westâ¬"s sexual
obsessions, etc.

12) The Church has launched a disconcerting campaign against the show
and has not condemned the violence wreaked by some of its followers, an
attitude that only encourages them to repeat their deeds. Neither has it
responded to the arguments and explanations that I have given in various
interviews for radio programs. I hope that they will do so now.



http://www.leonferrari.com.ar/exposiciones/retrospectiva/index.htm&hl=en&lr=&sa=G
EXHIBITIONS: "Retrospective: Works 1954-2004 "

NOT To The CENSORSHIP Of the ART!

IF To The FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION!

Friday 17 of December, Justice determined to suspend retrospective that
present a in the Cronopios room of the Cultural Center Recoleta of the
City of Buenos Aires. In the sample there are drawings, sculptures and
collages made 50 years in the last. A part of those works is one cr í
tica to the idea of the Christianity "to punish to the different one".

I request to them that they help to defend us sending it a message to
the director of Recoleta, Nora Hochbaum , to the following directions:

relpublicas [at] centroculturalrecoleta.org
<mailto:relpublicas [at] centroculturalrecoleta.org>;
aaccr [at] centroculturalrecoleta.org <mailto:aaccr [at] centroculturalrecoleta.org>

prensa [at] centroculturalrecoleta.org
<mailto:prensa [at] centroculturalrecoleta.org>;
produccion [at] centroculturalrecoleta.org
<mailto:produccion [at] centroculturalrecoleta.org>

erubinstein [at] centroculturalrecoleta.org
<mailto:erubinstein [at] centroculturalrecoleta.org>;
lpineiro [at] centroculturalrecoleta.org
<mailto:lpineiro [at] centroculturalrecoleta.org>



In defense of the freedom of expression in all its forms, we showed our
opposition to any type of censorship. In relation to the retrospective
one in the Cultural Center Recoleta, we say NOT to any attempt of
closing of the sample, as we say to any imposition on our freedom not to
create or to choose the works that we were present at like spectators.
Because the exhibition of works approaches to us one of the Argentine
creators with greater prestige in the country and the outside, and its
exhibition had to pass in a climate of freedom and tolerance, we
supported the decision of the Government of the City to organize the
sample and to defend its permanence without yielding to the pressures of
those who they try to close it. Because we defend the freedom of
expression of the the same like ours and because we do not want that
they have the charge of or they restrict our freedom to choose, we
celebrated the accomplishment and continuity of the sample. We waited
for adhesions a: to censurano [at] yahoo.com.ar <mailto:censurano [at] yahoo.com.ar>

Thank you very much and a hug, Leon Ferrari