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1812-2016
1812- 2016
2016
Digital image. Dimensions variable.
Charles Minard’s map of the Napoleonic Campaign in Russia, Carte figurative des pertes successives in
hommes de l'Armée Française dans la campagne de Russie 1812-1813, is
considered the best statistical illustration ever made.
In an apparently simple cartographic description, the French
engineer innovatively includes different fields of information and depicts the advance and retreat of one of the most disastrous
military campaigns in history.
The 1812-2016 map is a reinterpretation of Minard's map that focuses on the Mexican Drug War, which began in 2006. Based on the same kind of informational flow chart
as Minard, 1812-2016 describes the yearly increase of victims in the order of
tens of thousands, correlating it with the retail cost of cocaine in the United
States, whose price does not register greater variation. Likewise, it records
specific events and geographic locations related chronologically.
History has objectively judged Napoleon as an arrogant statesman who threw his troops against an enemy he could not interpret and under conditions he failed to understand.
Like Minard’s Map, this reinterpretation seeks to visually
represent the Mexican Drug War as a catastrophic, ongoing and uncorrected
military campaign that has forever changed Mexico's history.
This work was exhibited at Muca Roma (2017); download publication.
Installation view. Muca Roma, Mexico City.