Statement 2019
Transcription of the statement for the 21st Biennial
For me, the documents have two dimensions: one is the information they hold as historical sources and the other is the materiality itself, the paper or the object. These subjects have great phenomenological potential, and the relationship of the people with their past in these two dimensions is for me a fundamental subject of art. My relationship with historical sources is very personal, and I think that the documents can be used to identify social problems in the present.
I am originally from Michoacán, which is the state (department) where the city of Cherán is located. A few years ago I finished the University of the Arts in Mexico City and I wanted to study the context of Michoacán, so I started my field work there because I wanted to understand what was the relationship between the Purépechas of the time of the European invasion (1540) and the current Purépechas.
I wanted to understand the way in which an indigenous culture had withstood the ravages of Western culture and how there was a continuity in the demands of the people of Cherán, and I realized how one of the most innovative political forms—which responded to current problems such as ecology , democracy, identity—revive their ancestral means of organization.
I think that the indigenous cultural forms have been with them for many years.
During the social movements of the original peoples of Mexico, these cultural forms are often potential and comprise their symbolic capital.
In Cherán's autonomy process, many cultural forms, as artistic productions, have been made visible, but also the ways of relating or organizing power have emerged from the original culture. In that way, my work Interrupción del Sueño links ideas of cultural practices and social processes in indigenous autonomy.