Ulises Carrión’s Mail Art Campaign
In August 1977, Uruguayan artists Jorge Caraballo and Clemente Padín were arrested by the Uruguayan authorities on charges of printing and distributing materials that disparaged the military regime. The mail art network mobilized and launched an international campaign of public pressure that reached the U.S. State Department and eventually persuaded the Uruguayan government to release the artists from prison. Carrión played a pivotal role in this campaign by denouncing the imprisonment of the artists as early as February 1978 and by instructing his collaborators in the mail art network to do the same.
Signed letter circulated by Ulises Carrion, 1978
Ulises Carrión
Letter
Ulises Carrión, Aart van Barneveld (d. 1990), Salvador Flores
Magazine
Carrión made the imprisonment of Jorge Caraballo and Clemente Padín the centerpiece of the cover of the fifth issue of Ephemera, an assembling magazine that he published together with Aart van Barneveld and Salvador Flores. A layout of the magazine’s cover reveals that Carrión anchored all the other contributions around his own swirling announcement of the artists’ incarceration and his call to request and transmit information on the pressing issue. Similar calls to action came from other corners of the mail art network, and over the course of the following months, through relays and echoes, the plight of the artists became known to the U.S. State Department which launched an official inquiry and pressured the Uruguayan military to release the artists after months in prison.
