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ID Card, Buenos Aires

Print
ca. 2002 (made)
Artist/Maker

Cecilia Mandrile uses her computer as a portable studio and, with her printer, she can work anywhere, from airport lounge to bus station. Since leaving Argentina in her 20s she has travelled widely and her work addresses themes of homelessness and itineracy.

From 2002 to 2004 Mandrile made a set of ‘ID’ cards. She sees the letters ‘ID’ as standing not for ‘Identity’ but for ‘Intensively Displaced’, referring to the way in which many migrants are under pressure to leave their homeland and are constantly forced to move from place to place.

The cards imitate tourist snapshots and feature home-made dolls incorporating computer-manipulated self-portraits (see Museum no. E.214:1-2005). Their sorrowful, shadowy features, bandaged heads and bleak surroundings remind the viewer that these snapshots show neither comfortable homes nor exotic holiday resorts but simply places where migrants make do with scant resources.


Object details

Categories
Object type
TitleID Card, Buenos Aires (assigned by artist)
Materials and techniques
Digital ink-jet print on archival paper, offset lithography, plastic wallet
Brief description
Folded identity card wallet by Cecilia Mandrile containing two images of dolls in different locations in Buenos Aires. Argentina, 1998.
Physical description
Double sided folding wallet containing on the left an image of a two dolls' heads in a kind of pillowed cloth envelope with a printed caption I-D intensively displaced; and on the right the same dolls in their envelope lying in a white street with a tree (trunk) to their left.
Dimensions
  • Wallet height: 7.1cm
  • Open width: 21cm
  • Card on left side of wallet height: 5.5cm
  • Card on left side of wallet width: 8.4cm
  • Card on right side of wallet height: 5.6cm
  • Card on right side of wallet width: 8.6cm
cards variable from 5.5/6 - 8.4/6c
Production typeLimited edition
Copy number
1/3
Marks and inscriptions
signed on the back of the wallet on the left hand lower corner in silver ink Mandrile and inscribed on the right side Buenos Aires 1/3
Credit line
Purchased through the Julie and Robert Breckman Print Fund
Production
One of a set of 30 cards from 'The Perfume of Absence' series
Subjects depicted
Place depicted
Summary
Cecilia Mandrile uses her computer as a portable studio and, with her printer, she can work anywhere, from airport lounge to bus station. Since leaving Argentina in her 20s she has travelled widely and her work addresses themes of homelessness and itineracy.

From 2002 to 2004 Mandrile made a set of ‘ID’ cards. She sees the letters ‘ID’ as standing not for ‘Identity’ but for ‘Intensively Displaced’, referring to the way in which many migrants are under pressure to leave their homeland and are constantly forced to move from place to place.

The cards imitate tourist snapshots and feature home-made dolls incorporating computer-manipulated self-portraits (see Museum no. E.214:1-2005). Their sorrowful, shadowy features, bandaged heads and bleak surroundings remind the viewer that these snapshots show neither comfortable homes nor exotic holiday resorts but simply places where migrants make do with scant resources.
Associated objects
Collection
Accession number
E.216-2005

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Record createdDecember 9, 2005
Record URL
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