Names of the Dead
Carlos Aguirre
For five years, Carlos Aguirre cut out and collected obituaries published in The New York Times. Under the headline “Names of the Dead,” the United States Department of Defense systematically confirmed the deaths of us soldiers in the Iraq War.
The installation of 1139 newspaper clippings—affixed only with thumbtacks, arranged one after the other—condemns the handling of information related to the war. Drawing on notions of data collection and the archive, Aguirre exposes the long list of names of dead soldiers—names often excluded from the official discourse. In this way, the artist grants materiality to these lists, transforming information into a graphic object of protest.
CARLOS AGUIRRE (1948)
Names of the Dead, 2006–2010
Installation. 1139 newspaper clippings (obituaries)
Gift of the artist, 2011
