"In Cildo Meireles's career one is unlikely to find a support, a subject or an artistic affiliation that sums up or translates the diverse set of his works. He began his work in the nineteen-sixties and in the meantime develops and delves into some cognitive postulates (for example, synaesthesia as a privileged relationship for knowing something) and a cohesive set of ethical beliefs (for example, the valuing of individual action in relation to the homogenization of the spheres of the economy, of politics and of culture). Thus, when faced with any of his works it is always possible to draw up, despite their apparent differences, relationships of contiguousness with several others in terms of what they share as method and aim, therefore mutually clarifying them. It is in this sense that, starting from the work he presented in the Documenta 11 (Kassel, Germany, 2002) –Element Disappearing/Element Disappeared– it is considered possible to synthetically set out the characteristics that link it to other moments in his production. This procedure does not only explain meanings that this work may only suggest when taken in isolation (despite fully containing them in potential), but it also makes clear the updating that Cildo Meireles carries out of the relationship between art and politics through it.(...)"