COST.1831

British raw wool, antique Georgian sack/net hook (c. 1820), oil, wax, eucalyptus wood (from Uruguay), hair, pigment, British soil, clay, canvas
120 × 244 × 101 cm (variable)
2025

Uruguay’s first president, Fructuoso Rivera, staged the Salsipuedes Massacre—luring Charrúa leaders into a peace meeting, then killing them to clear land for wool production. As British naval officer Thomas Cochrane secured Atlantic trade routes, the massacre unfolded in parallel with imperial expansion. The event marked both the near-erasure of the Charrúa and the beginning of a national amnesia—genocide buried under trade.