Un horizonte que
se pierde de vista
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Project realized in collaboration with Irene de Andrés
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In 1937, the Círculo Republicano Español (Spanish Republican Circle) of Montevideo sent the first shipment of tinned corned beef to help Republican forces fighting in the Spanish Civil War ¹. Eighty-five years later, a group of archaeologists from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) dug a test pit at the former concentration camp of Jadraque, in Guadalajara province, where they found, among other things, remnants of some of those tins which had traveled all the way to Spain from the Uruguayan department of Río Negro. In Un horizonte que se pierde de vista [A Horizon Fading from View], Irene de Andrés and Alán Carrasco reconstruct an episode from one of the most turbulent moments in twentieth-century history that connects Spain and Uruguay via the bonds of anti-fascist solidarity. The 5,200 nautical miles that separate the two countries are represented here as a non-space that simultaneously operates as both a barrier and a connector, underscoring the idea of the Atlantic route as a bidirectional path.

Un horizonte que se pierde de vista focuses on the Alsina, Campana, and Florida, the three steamships of the Marseille-based Société Générale de Transports Maritimes à Vapeur that took turns transporting Uruguayan volunteers for the International Brigades, corned beef for Republicans at the front, and Spanish exiles who eventually fled to the Americas.

Displayed for the first time at the Centro Cultural de España in Montevideo, Un horizonte que se pierde de vista features a central sculpture—made of empty corned beef tins—from which the exhibition took its title. With this piece, we also articulated the space and itinerary of the show, precisely reconstructing the transatlantic route traveled by those ships. Various works in different media and materials unfold around this backbone-like sculpture, developed due to our 2023 residency and research in the Centro Cultural de España en Montevideo Uruguay.

In addition to artworks, the project includes objects, photographs, and historical evidence culled from the archives of the Museo de la Revolución Industrial in Fray Bentos and the Archivo del Centro Republicano Español (records kept at the Humanities and Education Department of the Universidad de la República – UDELAR) which, like guiding fossils, explain the defiant spirit and support of Uruguayan civil society for the Republican cause during the Spanish Civil War and the subsequent years of exile.

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_{¹ Starting in 1937, the Círculo Republicano Español in Montevideo sent the Spanish Republican government food shipments to be distributed among the population or armed forces as needed. On 1 May 1937, the Spanish press reported that this association of Republican sympathizers in the Uruguayan capital had sent 3,000 kilos of tinned corned beef to the front (República Española, 2nd period, Year I, no. 6. Montevideo, 1-5-1941, p. 3, “Efemérides de la Revolución. 1º de mayo de 1937”).}