Approaching Human Disappearance Through Art

A fascinating conversation with Chantal Meza and Brad Evans

Chantal Meza stands with her artwork

A new episode of the Edgy Ideas Podcast is up now!

In this deeply insightful podcast, artist Chantal Meza and author Brad Evans reflect on the meaning of disappearance. Chantal comes from Mexico where over 100,000 people have disappeared through violence and kidnapping. Human disappearance leaves a hole, an empty space, a void to which our human response is often one of confusion, desperation, pain, loss, anger and even guilt. 

Chantal is an artist working with abstract art, she is self-taught and learnt her craft from her artisanal family and the small Mexican community she grew up in. Chantal and Brad discuss how art, and abstract art in particular can speak to us when language fails us. In this wide-ranging discussion, Brad shares his philosophical insights into violence and disappearance in particular, saying that it is not easy to disappear somebody, and to disappear thousands takes a huge organisational effort, and asks what lies behind this?  

Brad also discusses the Rhonda valley and the disappearance of jobs, of community, of a vibrant culture after the coal mines were shut without anything to replace the jobs; in his most recent book, he describes how these communities have disappeared from the view of wider society in the UK. Disappearance of humans is one thing, another form of disappearance that is finally entering our collective awareness is the disappearance of nature and the loss of biodiversity; how do we make sense of that? 

Each of us has a relationship to disappearance, for some, it is a cultural phenomenon shared by collective people due to drug cartels, war or state terrorism that leads to many being disappeared. For others, it can be a personal story.

We hope this podcast stirs your thinking and raises awareness of the meaning of disappearance in our current world.

You can listen to the full podcast here.

You can also buy Brad and Chantal’s book, State of Disappearance, here.

I hope you enjoy this episode.

Simon