A second floor exhibition of ceiling-height sculptural columns that I interpret as totems are made by ceramic artist Mariana Castillo Deball, who lives and works in Mexico City and Berlin. The show opened last night at MACO, the Museo Arte Contemporaneo de Oaxaca on Macedonio Alcala. The work is on view until April 20 and features indigenous objects — gourds, urns, animals, gods and goddesses, cooking vessels — many of which replicate those found at the archeological sites of Monte Alban and Atzompa.
MACO is no ordinary edifice. While conquistador Hernan Cortes never lived in Oaxaca, his son Martin Cortes, second Marquis del Valle de Oaxaca built and occupied this grand house. It is now a perfect public space to view large works created by Mexico’s masters. The art is larger than life and fits into the more than spacious galleries.
Innovando la Tradicion with 1050 Degrados have helped produce the exhibition. They are a nonprofit ceramics arts cooperative that helps promote indigenous ceramics in many of Oaxaca’s pre-Hispanic villages that have created functional and artistic ware for centuries.
The artist asks us to look at how past informs present and creates future. Using indigenous Mexican icons from cooking vessels to codices images to gears and other technological devices, she creates a vertical landscape for imagining, exploring the consonance of time and its objects, memory and influence on the present.
In addition to this wonderful show, other art in the building offers us a view into Mexico’s contemporary art scene. Plus, the balmy January evening gave me a chance to look over the balcony onto the Andador, the pedestrian walk that connects the Zocalo to Santo Domingo Church. In the distance a band played and a sequence of wedding parties paraded in and out of the neighborhood churches, too.
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¿Quién medirá el espacio, quién me dirá el momento? Mariana Castillo Deball Enero 24 – abril 20, 2015 Inauguración: Sábado 24 de enero, 7 pm – 9 pm. La exposición inicia con una pregunta sobre la consonancia entre el tiempo y los objetos, y cómo la memoria se impregna del presente. ¿Cómo contar la historia del universo en cien años? ¿Cómo contar la historia del universo en un día? Serpiente, pochote, engrane, trompo, pelota, guerrero-cornudo, madre tierra, alfarero, olla, murciélago, tornillo, perro, mazorca, rana con celular, raíz, lagartija, calabaza, anciano, guajolote, ceiba, columna infinita. Este repertorio de objetos, algunos de ellos arqueológicos, otros mecánicos, lúdicos o sintéticos; fueron seleccionados en el presente, junto con el Taller de Cerámica Coatlicue en Atzompa, Oaxaca. La selección fue el sustento para imaginar una serie de historias, que ahora se alzan cual columnas en el espacio expositivo. La pregunta inicial parte de la relación que los ceramistas de Atzompa tienen con su legado arqueológico y de qué manera este se expresa, se contamina o se disuelve en el presente. Lejos de tomar una postura purista, el trabajo comenzó con una serie de discusiones en torno a las copias, las falsificaciones, los cambios de estilo y las influencias en la historia de la arqueología mexicana. El proyecto cuestiona la idea de una tradición estática que no se debe cambiar para poder existir, ampliando el debate de lo que es la arqueología en el presente y cómo puede ser actualizada constantemente para resignificar panoramas visuales de identidad. Este proyecto un proyecto realizado en colaboración con el Taller de Cerámica Coatlicue, de la familia Hernández Alarzón en Santa María Atzompa, e Innovando la Tradición ac. Producido por el Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca. Mariana Castillo Deball (México, 1975) vive y trabaja en la Ciudad de México y en Berlín. Oliver Martínez Kandt, Curador (Oaxaca, 1983) Curador del programa Monogramas del MACO. Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca. MACO Alcalá 202, Centro Histórico Oaxaca, Oaxaca, México |
Chromatica at MACO Oaxaca: New Sounds, Ancient Textures
Inside the courtyard at MACO, once a conqueror’s palace
Chromatica, a multi-media art exhibition created by Guggenheim award-winning Mexican artist Tania Candiani, opened last weekend in Oaxaca at the Museo Arte de Contemporaneo de Oaxaca (MACO). The exhibition takes a new approach to sight and sound.
Chromatics is about how we communicate through music and color. It can be considered the interdisciplinary intersection between technology and art. Candiani explores the differences and similarities between language systems, sound and the logics of technology through her work.
This is interpretive, intuitive and not always “in your face” evident through the various experiences of this exhibition that stimulates and questions the visual and auditory senses. The result is to create an emotional experience that could be somewhat uncomfortable.
Old loom as modern sound machine
First is the sound of the traditional two-harness pedal loom used to weave serapes and rugs in Teotitlan del Valle. At the opening, three Mendoza family weavers stood at looms in the courtyard with microphones recording the sounds of their creativity. They wove fast, slow, in harmony and not.
Javier and friend from Teotitlan del Valle, with natural colors
We could hear the beating of the treadles, loud, soft, harsh, subtle, the whoosh of the shuttle going through the heddles, the rhythms of wood against wool. The recordings can be heard in one of the exhibition rooms along with an abstract video of the work in progress. For how much longer will we hear this sound?
Upstairs on the second floor of the museum, we see the historical elements used to prepare the wool. The dyestuffs: cochineal, indigo and pericone (wild marigold). We see ancient stone grinders where people kneeled to prepare the powder. We see embroidery hoops embellished in red, blue and yellow, telling the story of the colors as recorded in the pre-Hispanic codices.
Metates, manos de metates and cochineal powder
But there is more than meets the eye: tone poems of color embroidered onto cloth that tell of the modern experience of traditional color in a changing, mechanized world. What does blue evoke? How does red make us feel? What is the human labor needed to give us these colors that we take for granted and enjoy?
As the crowd gathered around an ancient loom converted into a sound box, people took turns cranking the take-up roll, traditionally used to wind the cloth as it is woven. In this structure, it turned the wheel to produce sounds. The “thread” was string — as in violin or piano.
A cochineal painted room of breeding cactus gives us a sense of how many of these bugs are needed to color just one rug or garment. The color intensity penetrates.
Old hand carders against a backdrop of blue
Questions? Did the exhibition go far enough? Were the exhibits as interesting as they could have been? All the explanations were in Spanish with no English “subtitles,” so the meanings could be harder for some non-bilingual visitors to “get.” Was there a clear path to meaning from one gallery to the next?
Moving from the preparation of cochineal to indigo, we see the concrete vats replicated to show us how the color of the plant is extracted. There is an excellent video created by Eric Chavez Santiago, education director at the Museo Textil de Oaxaca about the process of preparing indigo. It would have been a great educational video to include in this exhibition — better than the one selected to show.
Ceramic artists from Santa Maria Atzompa created bellowing birds in the “yellow” room. Push and pull the bellows to hear how sound emanates and enters our bodies for interpretation. Aren’t we all cogs in the wheel?
Meaning comes from many sources. The exhibition raises questions about how technology impacts and changes people, traditional life, practices and uses. How many are using the metate now to grind the cochineal and indigo, when most have gone over to coffee grinders for ease of labor.
Does this change the outcome of the fiber and color? What about the practice of hand-weaving itself? Will automated looms result in lower prices, yes, and the disappearance of a handmade process, perhaps? Will people only do this for a hobby and not for a business or way of life? What does it mean for the continuation of culture to experience this change? What about the raw materials: The hand-spun wool and natural dyes, what will become of them and the people who make them?
I presume these are the questions that the artist is asking us to explore in this exhibition. As supporters, appreciators and consumers of art and artisanry, how do we each contribute to the continuation or demise of hand craft?
The contemporary art museum is located on the Andador — Macedonio Alcala between Murguia and Morelos.
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Posted in Cultural Commentary, Oaxaca Mexico art and culture, Photography, Travel & Tourism
Tagged art, chromatics, critique, culture, exhibit, MACO, Mexico, Oaxaca, photography, review, sound, Tania Candiani, technology, weaving