541 Days

#13
Ines Molina Navea
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"541 Days" is Ines Molina Navea's project that is comprised of portraits of people with masks who are voicing their discontent and in which she criticizes the hostile attitude of governments towards them.

Navae explains his project as follows: "In 1870 Francis Galton tries to establish, through composite portraits of European convicts, common facial features that determined the physiognomy of the crime. Today, from the political power, is imposes a new image to identify violence and antisocial behavior; a facial pattern are no longer necessary to create this new type, now is the act of hiding with a mask, a logo that represents the desire of not belong to this system.

541 days, tries to account for the historical use of photography as a political tool, revealing patterns in the way they have been and still are used to configure the idea of social enemy, even when individuals who have an image, are nonexistent outside representation that gives them life, in the case of Galton, the composite portraits generates a new face, which erases precisely the type physiognomic expected to find, in the case of the mask, its use is exclusive of protests express social discontent, the masked individuals not exist outside of the protests, though states continue stereotyping the image of masked, giving it a socio-economic sector (always poor), and personality: antisocial, violent and destructive. Thus, by relating both strategies, it is possible to establish a historical correlation showing not only the use of the image, but also of institutional attempts to materialize the idea of a social enemy to justify terrorism law, and now finally in Chile, the change in the law that changes from 60 to 541 days in prison for taking a mask on a public protest."