Brian Carlson is an American artist and human rights activist who was born in Chicago, Illinois, and educated at Southern Methodist University, in Dallas, Texas. There he received degrees in Fine Arts and chose to use that knowledge to portray those disappeared by dictatorships. The intention of portraying them is, according to him, the guarantee of never having lost them. Parents who have been left without children, children and grandchildren who have never known their parents or their grandparents. In silence, each day this tall man with a robust build takes several paintings, some black and white photographs and a canvas and heads to the darkness of his room in the city of Wisconsin, one of the Midwestern states of the United States. USA. In the genesis of her work she addressed social problems such as homelessness, the environment and violence against women. But this was just the beginning of a film of blood that covered the corners of the continent after the Latin American dictatorships that began to radiate the faces of those who are no longer here.
Understanding these themes, he arrived in Argentina in , for an exhibition at the Recoleta Cultural Center. In one of the many interims he is invited to a visit to the Clandestine Detention Center of the Navy Mechanics School, tragically remembered as C Level Executive List ESMA, where the Space for Memory and the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights operated. It was the story of what happened in that place that made us think about the creation of a memorial to keep the missing people in memory. He thought of them kneeling and with their heads covered, the story in the ESMA of that unknown man took him back in time. He could feel the cold on his feet intermingling with the warm blood that decades ago began to cover the faces of those who are not there today. There were parallel stories of loneliness and suffering, and he couldn't stay out of it. Carlson begins to diagram the exhibition that would tour Argentina and much of Latin America.
The hand-painted portraits reflect that obligation that humanity has to stand in front of its mirrors every morning, to find them to find themselves. Each of these oil paintings were created from the photos used to denounce the kidnappings. Each of these oil paintings were created from the photos used to denounce the kidnappings, a work that moves and that, thanks to the relatives of the victims of state terrorism, has become an eternal gallery. His original objective when exhibiting his work at the Flag Monument in the city of Rosario in was to reappear the disappeared. The apathy of power wanted to erase its existence, but far from that, the memory remains more alive than ever. When those faces appear at the former murder sites, on a symbolic level, the dictatorship is defeated again.