The sea is change and permanence. It is structure but it is also a transforming force. It is tame and turbulent; it symbolizes both the invariable and the nephemeral. This ambivalence is what allows Enrique Ramirez, a Chilean artist based in Paris, to reflect on recent history, memory, absences and also on the union of cultures, diversity and differences.

Fifty years after the coup d’état that overthrew Salvador Allende, the Parque de la Memoria presents El imposible paisaje, an exhibition by Enrique Ramirez curated by Florencia Battiti that takes root in the memory of political violence in Chile, a country the artist left to settle in France, and which allowed him to work on exile and distances; misencounters and reunions; losses and oblivions.

His work combines visual languages and crosses artistic disciplines that encompass a lush production that moves between film, photography and poetry. His work is made up of images, videos and installations around the seas. Next to the Río de la Plata, the fatal destiny of many of the victims of State terrorism in Argentina, this significance takes on special relevance. Battiti states: “When Ramirez dwells on the words of Cecilia De Vicenti, daughter of Azucena Villaflor, one of the founders of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, who was arrested and later disappeared in search of her son Nestor, there is no doubt that under her gaze the sea is imbued with metaphors and opens a path from the past to the future: ‘They showed me where my mother was and I went to the coast between Santa Teresita and San Bernardo. I have to thank the sea for bringing my mother. I actually have a lifeguard son. The sea brought me the story'”.

In this way, this exhibition is an invitation to remember and connect Chilean history with Argentine history; to immerse oneself in the experiences proposed by the sea, and also by art. Crossed by immensity and calm, they arouse emotions that allow us to reflect on pain, unions, duality and absences.

The Impossible Landscape is a project produced by the Parque de la Memoria, under the Sub-secretariat of Human Rights and Cultural Pluralism of the GCBA, with the collaboration of the Ecole Supérieure de Photographie d’Arles, the Institut Français en l’Argentine -depending on the French Embassy- and ADAGP.