Laughing Flames III

This painting is the third in a series of four works titled The Laughing Flames. In these works, Frigerio addresses the regular practice by Pinochet’s secret police of dumping the bodies of their opponents in the Mapocho River. The canvases depict obscured figures floating in a dark, ambiguous setting, their Christ-like bodies wrapped in white shrouds. The series title may refer to Frigerio’s interest in the four elements of fire, water, wind, and earth, or it may reference the immolation scene in Richard Wagner’s opera Götterdämmerung, in which the Valkyrie Brünnhilde throws herself upon “the laughing flames” of her lover Siegfried’s funeral pyre.