Virginia Colwell
The Address Book, numbers 28 & 38, 2013
Virginia Colwell (1980)
The Address Book, numbers 28 & 38, 2013
Ink on handmade paper
42 x 30.5 cm
Virginia Colwell approaches the arrest of Arturo ‘El Negro’ Durazo microhistorically; using a letter congratulating her father on the Mexican fugitive’s arrest as a starting point for her investigation. Durazo was Chief of Police in Mexico City during José López Portillo’s presidency (1976-1982) and became the personification of corruption, fleeing the country by the time Portillo’s term ended. Colwell’s ink drawings of pages from Durazo’s address book bridge the gaps between rumor and reality, authority and the individual. Using the FBI documents to build an image of the man, Colwell found that they provided little more than a speculative image, and that the photocopied pages were the only clear portrait of his life in the entire file.