The YUruguayan Connection

On February 19th, 2015, Clemente Padín, the elder statesman of Uruguayan art, replied to an email from his compatriot and young artist Francisco Tomsich with a fateful attachment: a list of email and postal addresses of six Yugoslav mail artists. These were some of the people with whom Padín had corresponded in the 1970s and 80s and 90s as part of a mail art network.Padín’s list launched Tomsich into a story of surprising discoveries, unintended consequences, and, indeed, Yugoslavia as a cult...