Aplacado (Siete cascos percudidos)

Miguel Aragón addresses the brutality of drug-related violence in his native Mexico by altering published images of murder victims to explore ideas such as perception, memory, and transformation. Using reductive printmaking techniques that include cutting, drilling, and scraping of the copper printing plate, he transforms these bloody scenes of decapitations, shootings, and assault into striking new images that paradoxically possess certain aesthetic qualities. As in this posthumous portrait of a drug-war victim, Aragón’s images function as visual metaphors that generate new meanings and associations, including reminders that our lives are finite.