X post facto (5.6), from the series X post facto (équis anónimo)

Muriel Hasbun, X post facto (5.6), from the series X post facto (équis anónimo), 2009, printed 2013, inkjet print, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the artist in memory of her parents, Janine Janowski and Antonio Hasbun Z., 2013.33, © 2009, Muriel Hasbun
Copied Muriel Hasbun, X post facto (5.6), from the series X post facto (équis anónimo), 2009, printed 2013, inkjet print, image: 40 1231 12 in. (102.980.0 cm) sheet: 4435 12 in. (111.890.2 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the artist in memory of her parents, Janine Janowski and Antonio Hasbun Z., 2013.33, © 2009, Muriel Hasbun

Artwork Details

Title
X post facto (5.6), from the series X post facto (équis anónimo)
Date
2009, printed 2013
Location
Not on view
Dimensions
image: 40 1231 12 in. (102.980.0 cm) sheet: 4435 12 in. (111.890.2 cm)
Copyright
© 2009, Muriel Hasbun
Credit Line
Gift of the artist in memory of her parents, Janine Janowski and Antonio Hasbun Z.
Mediums Description
inkjet print
Classifications
Keywords
  • Abstract
Object Number
2013.33

Artwork Description

Born in El Salvador to a French mother with a Polish Jewish background and a father whose Palestinian Christian parents settled in Central America shortly before World War I, Hasbun has focused on issues of identity and memory throughout her career. The X post facto (équis anónimo) series is based on an archive of x-rays Hasbun discovered in her father’s office. As a dentist, he was often asked to use his archive to identify bodies of the disappeared, victims of the violence of civil war, sometimes members of his own family. For Hasbun, her re-imagined x-ray photographs, made by enlarging and reprinting the original negatives, are documents turned into metaphors of complex lives and social histories.


A Democracy of Images: Photographs from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2013