About This Exhibit

Book banning has been inextricably woven into the history of print culture worldwide. This exhibit offers a glimpse into three Latin American countries where government officials deemed certain presses, authors, and cultural works as political threats during the twentieth century. Reflecting on censorship requires an effort to unveil what is presumed to be invisible: censors disappearing books, readers safeguarding materials, and banned authors continuing to write, all wishing their efforts to go unnoticed.

By envisioning the hidden history of these texts, one that was meant to be unseen, we invite you to contemplate the unstable materiality of books in contexts of state repression. Books are simultaneously fragile, susceptible to fire or destructive raids, and enduring, surviving alongside their readers in clandestine print shops or buried in the ground. Beyond their potential to turn into ashes or be disguised as other reading material, we can imagine the human and nonhuman infrastructures necessary for censorship or for ensuring books remain available in times of repression. Consider the readers and their homes, concealing beloved books while pondering whether possessing such objects might lead them to jail or worse. Contemplate the institutions and bureaucracies established to control the production of ideas by targeting the objects that contained them. Also imagine the silence, the void, the impoverished cultural realm that censorship leaves in its wake.

(In)visible labor is involved at every stage in the history of censorship. In this small exhibit you can visualize how the Argentinian, Brazilian, and Cuban states acted as subjects fixated on the archive, with the ability to  confiscate manuscripts, and collect, preserve or burn books. Furthermore, although it is not depicted here, you are invited to explore the endeavors of individuals, collectives, and institutions that have used writing, reading and sharing books as essential forms of resistance.