Ernesto Salmerón at Tate London

Ernesto Salmerón (1977, lives and works in Managua, Nicaragua) trained as a filmmaker and documentary photographer. Auras of War, 1996-2006, exhibited for the first time at the TATE London since its acquisition, in view until August 2019. In this work, Salmerón has transported a wall inside a military truck from Nicaragua. The wall showed a defaced image of the early twentieth-century revolutionary leader, Augusto C. Sandino. Sandino became a popular icon for the later Sandinista movement. The Sandinista National Liberation Front had overthrown a dictatorship regime in Nicaragua in 1979, replacing it with a form of socialist government. In 2006, after learning the building was to be demolished, Salmerón had the wall excavated. The wall was featured in exhibitions in Nicaragua, where it was closed for its political content; El Salvador; and at the 2007 Venice Biennale. After its first showing in Nicaragua, the wall was permanently installed into the back of a former military truck. Another relic of the revolution, this truck was sent by the German Democratic Republic to Nicaragua in support of the Sandinistas' socialist cause. It was later converted for commercial use. They suggest the uncertain outcomes of political revolutions. Their presence raises questions about the revolutionary ideas they symbolize, how those ideas live and die, moving and transforming over time. The presentation at the Turbine Hall is curated by Michael Wellen with Fiontán Moran.