Discovery

Human Resource Exploitation: A Family Album

September 24, 2021 - January 15, 2022

South Gallery - On Site Exhibition

Installation view of "Human Resource Exploitation: A Family Album" by Ramiro Garcia and Elena Brokaw. Photo by Mikayla Whitmore.

Detail of Elena Brokaw's "Human Resource Exploitation: A Family Album." Original photograph by Ramiro Garcia (d 1980).

A copy of "Human Resource Exploitation Manual" the torture manual created by the CIA, is available to viewers. Photo by Mikayla Whitmore.

Installation view of "Human Resource Exploitation: A Family Album" by Ramiro Garcia and Elena Brokaw. Photo by Mikayla Whitmore.

Poster for "Human Resource Exploitation: A Family Album" by Ramiro Garcia and Elena Brokaw. Designed by Chloe Bernardo.

TV Card for "Human Resource Exploitation: A Family Album" by Ramiro Garcia and Elena Brokaw. Designed by Chloe Bernardo.

Elena Brokaw and UNLV professor Dr. Erika Abad join Cuban writer Jorge Olivera Castillo and human rights defender Nancy Alfaya for an evening of conversation and poetry about the misuse of institutional language, the role of art, the impact of state terrorism, and the importance of being able to use one’s own language and voice. Brokaw is the creator of Human Resource Exploitation: A Family Album, a collaboration between herself and her late father, Ramiro García, an activist who was assassinated by the Guatemalan government in 1980. Castillo is the Black Mountain Institute’s current City of Asylum Fellow.

CONTENT NOTICE
Human Resource Exploitation: A Family Album focuses on the violent effects of government policies.
The exhibition contains dehumanizing language and language related to death and torture.

In 1980, when Elena Brokaw was four and a half months old, the Guatemalan government assassinated her father, the artist and activist Ramiro García. In Human Resource Exploitation: A Family Album, she uses the photographs and ephemera she inherited from him to illuminate the context of his death. Enlarged to a confronting scale, the photographs have been altered by Brokaw to include text from the Human Resource Exploitation Manual -- a torture guide published by the CIA, the organization that trained the Guatemalan authorities who conducted the murder. By juxtaposing the evasive euphemisms of the book with the direct warmth of the photographs, she evokes the clash between violent historical events and the reality of everyday people whose lives are changed by forces beyond their control.

“The President of Guatemala at the time, General Fernando Romeo Lucas García, was a graduate of the School of the Americas where the Human Resource Exploitation Manual was taught,” the artist says. “When my research led me to this source I immediately had a feeling of complete abjection at the use of institutional language to obscure the actions that were taking place. I use the images that my father took to transfer a portion of the unease, anxiety, and fear that I felt reading it to help create empathy for those that had to live in the environment manuals like these created in Guatemala.” Brokaw is a Creative Writing MFA candidate in Literary Nonfiction at UNLV.

The artist would like to thank the family, friends, and colleagues who have given unfailing support.

Human Resource Exploitation: A Family Album is funded in part with support from Nevada Humanities, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and by the WESTAF Regional Arts Resilience Fund, a relief grant developed in partnership with The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support arts organizations in the 13-state western region during the COVID-19 pandemic. Further assistance has been provided by the UNLV Jean Nidetch Care Center.

Audio excerpts from exhibition labels can be found on the "Human Resource Exploitation: A Family Album" playlist on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-986537221-101368684/sets/human-resource-exploitation-a-family-album-by-ramiro-garcia-and-elena-brokaw?si=a81d0bba9c5140dba46b10cda3bedab2

Hyperallergic article on Elena Brokaw's "Human Resource Exploitation: A Family Album"

Interview by Nevada Public Radio with Elena Brokaw