The American plastic artist Brian Carlson He was arrested by the City Police while carrying out an artistic intervention in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Almagro: he was painting white handkerchiefsthe historical symbol of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo.
Carlson was detained for approximately two hours in Plaza Almagro. According to what he himself said on his social networks after being released, he was not formally arrested, but he was not allowed to leave until the authorities notified him of a court order with an explicit warning. “I’m fine. The Police detained me for about two hours in Plaza Almagro. They didn’t arrest me, but they didn’t let me go until they notified me of a court order that warned me that if I painted again, something more serious would happen,” the artist wrote.
The episode set off alarm bells in human rights organizations and in the cultural sphere, where the event was read as an act of censorship against a peaceful intervention linked to Argentine historical memory. The image of the white scarf, emblem of decades of struggle for identity and justice, is at the center of the controversy.
Carlson is adjunct professor at the Milwaukee Art Institute and has been developing artistic work focused on human rights in Latin America for years. Your sample “Revenants”in which he portrays people who disappeared during the region’s dictatorships, was exhibited last April in La Plata, where the Libres del Sur movement inaugurated the Casa Norita—in homage to Nora Cortiñas—with their presence.
His activism exceeds the strictly artistic field: Carlson regularly participates in retiree rallies in front of the National Congress, accompanying the protests against pension cuts every Wednesday. He is, in that sense, a well-known figure in Argentine human rights circles and social organizations, which adds an additional political dimension to his detention.
