Since 1984, Chilean artist Eugenio Dittborn has been making works that he calls Airmail Paintings. They are constructed collages made of cheap, lightweight materials: photocopied images and text, culled from a wide variety of sources, sewn onto clothes-lining fabric, sometimes with the addition of printed or painted marks and messages. The large panels are then folded and packed into specially made envelopes and sent off on their travels...

These itinerant artworks collect meanings like souvenirs, as they journey from place to place, across borders, over time. Made, in part, in response to Santiago's place at the periphery of the international art scene and partly to circumvent the oppressive and regimented structures of Chile's military government, (as well as to reflect previous periods of colonization and repression) these mobile visual messages are free to go anywhere and initiate an evolving dialogue with their global audience.

"...The Inca mummy of Cerro El Plomo, or the English Sailor John Torrington preserved in the ice for over a century, or the political victim found after seventeen years in the desert of the North of Chile, all of them almost intact thanks to ice, snow and salt, active agents in preserving flesh...I stitch on to the support of non-woven fabric much thinner semi-transparent pieces of the same non-woven fabric (lining material). Under these transplants, if we can call them that, there are irregular stains made by spilling very liquid paint, usually grey in colour. Those transplants look like membranes that cover and protect the flesh. These milky tissues are like ice or snow melting: they allow a blurred view of the body..." Eugenio Dittborn

Itinerary for Painting No. 95: Santiago de Chile - Antwerp '91 - London '92 - Southampton '93 - Rotterdam '93/4 - Wellington '94 - Chicago '95 - New York '97.

A MESSAGE FROM OUT OF THE BLUE...

"The Airmail Paintings were conceived for at least two specific sites; that of the sender and that of the receiver, as well as for breaking/producing the distance between the two." Eugenio Dittborn.

• What would you make or do, inspired by this artist's work?

• Airmail paintings are visual messages. Like 'Chinese Whispers' they are sent out with one meaning and eventually return with that meaning added to or changed completely. What would happen if you were to link up with someone, somewhere else and send them a visual message about your life or your past. How would you convey the message and how might they respond?...

• In the 'opportunities' section of Artists Newsletter there are always a few Mail art projects and most of them are free except for p+p. Why not submit some work?... Alternatively you could devise your own project and invite artists to send work to you (ads in this section are free). Then you can curate an exhibition from the work you receive.

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"Airmail Painting no.91: The 11th History of the Human Face (500 years)", (detail) 1991. (4)

"...Travel is the politics of my paintings; and the folds, the unfolding of that politics." Eugenio Dittborn.

The work Dittborn makes is political, in form and intention, but in a persuasive rather than a dogmatic way. He uses images collected from various historical sources but usually with reference to the various powers (from the Spanish Conquistadors to the Pinochet regime) who have sought to control the people of South America and their personal histories. By removing them from their original context, rescuing them from obscurity he reveals those mechanisms of repression and control. He has described his Airmail Paintings as "a way of salvaging my previous work, which was threatened, like every other cultural production in Chile over these years, with oblivion."

In "Airmail Painting no.91: The 11th History of the Human Face (500 years)", Dittborn combined faces drawn by the patients of a psychiatric hospital in Santiago de Chile (many of whom were indigenous peoples of the region, labeled as mad by Chilean society and confined), with police records of criminals, children's drawings and images from newspapers or found graffiti.

Globalisation, whether it be of communications, media or economics can sometimes appear to have a telescopic effect on geographic, temporal and even cultural differences. Dittborn has talked of the vital complexities of cultural difference and how these are so often oversimplified, fixed or even lost in the process of travel or translation.