Paine Memorial consists of a forest made of individual timber logs totaling 1000, minus 70. Each log represents the friends and family left behind by those who died, while each missing log symbolizes those who lost their lives in the 1973 tragedy. In place of a log, family members of each victim were invited to design a personalized ceramic mosaic honoring their loved ones. The wooden poles are arranged in a square plot of land, covered with gray and beige pebbles.
In 2000 family members of the victims formed the group AFDD-Paine, Association of Families of the Detained-Disappeared (Agrupación de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos y Ejecutados de Paine) as a means to speak out about what happened and also grief their loss. Three generations of Paine community members were involved in creating the Paine Memorial, making this a truly collective art project. The layout of the memorial invites individuals to reflect on the past as well as host events and meetings. The original design intended to make the memorial a permanent structure, but the Chilean government only provided enough funding to manage and maintain the memorial from a semi-permanent trailer placed alongside the memorial.
The Paine Memorial strives to be “una memoria viva,” a living memory with one goal: ¡Para que nunca más vuelva a ocurrir! (May this never happen again!)
All copyright belongs to Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts, Shanghai University.
