The seizure and destruction of artworks is a recurring problem that usually escalates in association with humanitarian disasters resulting from armed conflict. This phenomenon not only has dramatic consequences for a people’s memory and constitutes a threat to the World Heritage, it reaffirms the oppression and domination that has taken place in many parts of the world throughout human history.

The world became aware of the true scope of plunder in the late 1930s, when Adolf Hitler organized the systematic, industrial-scale theft of great master works housed in European museums and in private art collections, many of them owned by persons of Jewish descent. The theft and destruction of priceless pieces did not end there, however, and the successive conflicts that have plagued the Middle East even to this day illustrate clearly the great extent of looting and targeted theft during wartime.

Through Expolio/Plunder, artists Josefina Guilisasti, Diego Martínez and Francisco Uzabeaga seek to problematize the value of art and its role in housing the memory of a people. They also examine the quality that makes artworks objects of desire and symbols of power, and offer a reflection on how art can become an emblem of the human drama associated with armed struggle.