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We are taught in Mexico to look into the past in a very contrived way, and it's away which assumes many assumptions, not only about a notion of a 'glorious past;' our archeology, our big culture, the treasures of the last thirty centuries etc.., but we are also taught to look at all these things in a very conservative way, as if it were outside of ourselves. This was the way I was taught to look at Mexican culture. This work addresses a parallel, both looking at culture and at what we are taught what we are allowed to know, and looking at my own past and ideas, where I come from. It has to do with taboo, I am very interested in the notion of the taboo and crossing boundaries, I do it constantly in my work. It has to do with being on both sides of one place. This work is dealing with the feminine but it is also dealing with the masculine -- it is a game where I am acting both sides, the masculine and the feminine. I enter into these images with a disruptive attitude, there is this sense of prohibition, "Don't fuck with the past, you might get pregnant;" it's like a joke, something your mother, would tell you..! The play with the figures, becomes an act of violation of the space a kind of auto rape. It is a territory, which might belong to me or not; I am
messing with it. It is something which interests me; I want
to know more; I want to play games with this place. My work
is always a fragmented place; it's a place that basically is
filled with I seldom think about how my work is going to be read in a different cultural context, because my work is bound up with Mexican culture. Maybe this piece will have an emotional resonance. I think when people first see these figures they don't realize that they are constructed -- fictional. But that is only a reflection on our history and ourselves, after all. Mexico City, Mexico - December, 1994 |