Mixed media with a moving message.

• Author: Luxner, Larry
• Position: Art

Ten years after the worst terrorist attack in Latin American history, artist Mirta Kupfermine's memorial to its victims remains her country's most tangible, vivid reminder of that tragic day.

It happened on July 18, 1994, at 9:53 a.m. Kupfermine was at home when she heard the explosion that destroyed the nearby headquarters of AMIA, Argentina's largest Jewish organization. The blast left eighty five people dead, hundreds injured, and an entire nation in shock.

Her wood-and-marble sculpture is located in the heart of Buenos Aires at Plaza Lavalle, also known as Plaza de Justicia because it faces the country's highest court.

"Originally, I wanted to make a very big hole with the names of the victims, but I was afraid somebody would fall into it," says Kupferminc, a prominent local artist who was commissioned by the Jewish community to memorialize the dead.

Her memorial, which, the artist says, "has a sense of troth rather than beauty," was dedicated on the second anniversary of the AMIA bombing.

"I chose marble and quebracho, a very hard Argentine wood, to represent that this was an attack not against only the Jewish community, but against Argentina," she says. "This wood was also chosen because it is a natural material, coming from the earth, and because it changes its color as time passes. It was red at first; now it's almost black. This shows how time is passing, while the investigation continues without progress."

The memorial is shaped like a V, opening its arms to the Palacio de Tribunales figuratively embracing the building. Its most dramatic feature is the victims' names themselves, burned into the wood with fire.

"Originally, there were eighty six victims, but one of them--a Paraguayan named Irala--was later discovered to be living in Paraguay, and so we had to remove the name," she explains. "The nantes are included without any order, symbolizing that there was no logic in who was there that day and who wasn't. The sculpture is raised slightly from the ground because the dead haven't been buried yet. The marble base is round, meaning totality, and there you will find a broken triangle showing the exact hour when the attack took place."

Kupferminc's Polish-born father and Hungarian-born mother survived the horrors of Auschwitz. After World War II, they settled in Argentina.

"Once, when I was little, I asked my morn why she had the number '80264' branded in her arm, and she said 'to never forget.' When I was older, I made a print out...