Miriam Rodríguez

About the exhibition:

“In the month of May 2022, the United Nations Organization (UN) expressed in a statement its deep concern about the more than one hundred thousand forced disappearances officially registered in Mexico. A few months earlier, the Committee against Disappearances of this body visited our country and issued a report on this tragedy, stressing that "The disappearance of people in Mexico is a problem for everyone: for society as a whole and for all of humanity."

This situation has generated a crisis in society that forces us to take a position. Faced with it, we can deny it and take refuge in selfishness to look elsewhere, or face it with courage and solidarity, testing our ability as human beings to face the irrationality of the tragedy.

Miriam Rodríguez took the second path, putting her concerns and artistic resources at the service of this cause. For a long time, she has dedicated herself to accompanying the tireless search and support efforts of a civil organization, Families United for Our Disappeared Jalisco, better known by its acronym FUNDEJ, made up of women and men who are mothers, spouses, children and brothers, of missing persons in our state.”*

Soft Power – Search Stories documents this long process of accompaniment. The title borrows from the term coined by Joseph Nye, which refers to the ability to influence the behavior of others through cultural and ideological means to achieve desired results. Mrs. Guadalupe Aguilar, founder of FUNDEJ, is an example of the exercise of soft power, a motivation and guide to carry out her heroic work. The disappearance of her son led her to radically change her life and dedicate it completely to her search.

The Zapopan Art Museum, through its Biombo program, integrates the project of the artist Miriam Rodriguez, curated by Mónica Ashida and supported by FUNDEJ, into its exhibitions. The exhibition is made up of a publication, 106 engraving monotypes based on the documentation of the search carried out by Lupita Ayala, eleven monotypes, a SEMEFO segment search sheet, and a segment search sheet from Lupita Ayala's notebook.

The book Soft Power: Feelings as a Public Law recreates the experiences of ten people looking for their disappeared relatives based on conversations with women and men from the FUNDEJ civil association. The monotypes are based on verbal testimony and on the meticulous documentation that Guadalupe Ayala has made of the segments found in the Mirador pit during the search and recognition of the remains found there of her son Alfredo, who disappeared in November 2019.

We are infinitely grateful for her authorization for the graphic representation shown in the exhibition.

— Fragment of the text by curator Mónica Ashida.