Pedro Reyes, the sculptor of the work 'Tlali' that will be exhibited in Paseo de la Reforma in Mexico City, replacing the statue of Columbus, in an interview for EL PAÍS.Nayeli Cruz
The house looks like a spaceship made of concrete. As if it had landed in Coyoacán, south of Mexico City, and had been covered with vines, cacti and nopales, it would have attracted the swarming of a xoloescuincle dog and with it, the books, the masks and the rock pyramids. The workshop is just entering, on the right; there a team of artisans loose dust and noise while paramenting some stone blocks. They leave them smooth, straight. Later they will turn them into squares and later they will be lips, a chin, perhaps an eye. Together - all of them are many, 150 exactly - they will be
Tlali
, the sculpture that will replace that of Christopher Columbus on the Paseo de la Reforma in the capital; the work that has placed, after decades of work, the Mexican artist Pedro Reyes in the public eye.
The sculptor (Mexico City, 1972) receives EL PAÍS at his home and holds up stoic, almost indifferent, questions about controversies.
He gives leisurely responses to angry criticism on social media and gets emotional describing the project.
"My challenge is with the piece itself," he says and looks into my eyes.
“I think that the person who makes the sculpture is not the important thing, nobody remembers who made the Statue of Liberty, or the Angel of Independence.
We are going to disappear and our names will be forgotten and what is important is that the work of art stands on its own ”.
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And repaint their coats of arms ...
Në'amuk.
Who did what happened 500 years ago happen to?
Tlali
—which comes from the Nahualt word tlalli, which means earth— was already born among thorns. Last year, two days before October 12, the Government of Claudia Sheinbaum decided to remove the statue of Columbus under the pretext of restoring it. At first, the work was going to last a couple of months, which the head of Mexico City asked to reflect on the presence of the Genoese admiral in one of the main avenues of the city. Finally, a few days ago, it was announced that the sculptural complex of the sailor was going to be moved to another park. In its place, Reforma will place a tribute to indigenous women.
The replacement of Columbus, on whom the historical consequences of his arrival in the Caribbean in 1492 weigh heavily, with a work that represents the great forgotten of the country has raised blisters. Furthermore, some voices point out that a sculpture is not going to solve the ongoing obstacles these communities face. “Under the monuments, women now called indigenous are beaten off the sidewalks, denied papers and passports, made less, obstetrically violent, silenced in networks, disappeared or murdered for defending their territory ”, the filmmaker Luna Marán and the writer Gabriela Jauregui pointed out in this newspaper.
However, Pedro Reyes considers the sculpture as “significant” since there is no monument to indigenous women in Mexico: “And they are the force that has sustained this country. I am honored to have the opportunity to do this tribute. " About Columbus, the artist frames the decision within "the world movement where many figures representing imperialism and colonialism have been withdrawn." "It was going to happen independently: it is a statue that is vandalized every year," says Reyes, who alludes to the costly repair work of the work. "It is a statue that has artistic and historical value, and precisely for its conservation it needs to be moved to another place, because Reforma avenue is the
manifestodrome
."
This change of symbols has been decided within the celebration of the 200 years of independent Mexico, of the 500 of resistance when it was a Spanish colony and of the 700 since the founding of Tenochtitlán.
Sponsored by his Government, Andrés Manuel López Obrador has taken advantage of these centenarians to fuel a cultural battle between the vindication of the Mexica civilization and the so-called conquest.
There, entangled, the new sculpture makes its way.
One of the artisans from Pedro Reyes' workshop paramenting the stone that will be used for the sculpture 'Tlali'. Nayeli Cruz
The first images of 'Tlali'
This Thursday, the artist, excited by the commission, shared some first images of
Tlali
. “He already wanted the whole world to see it. It was something innocent, "they point out from within the project. The video only circulated a few minutes, but the echo of the criticism still lasts. The leak almost cost an employee of the Ministry of Culture a job and forced Claudia Sheinbaum to point out that this was not the final design. Now the instructions for the sculptor are clear: he can no longer show any type of material until it is final, not even the small 60-centimeter model of
Tlali
that he had built.
"What we are going to do in the end is not exactly what was seen in the images," says Reyes as if he apologized.
“A work of art is in a process of improvement during its elaboration and that is the beauty of sculpture, you make decisions —almost with your body— when you are carving it.
I think you have to judge on the final result ”.
Image of leaked sketch of 'Tlali'.RRSS
The following is known: the sculpture will be 6.5 meters high on a base of another 2.5 meters. It is made up of 150 blocks - measuring 75 centimeters and two tons each - of basalt, a volcanic stone, collected from a quarry on the slopes of the Popocatepetl volcano. The inspiration for the work is the giant heads that the Olmecs erected more than 3,500 years ago. "The first challenge involved making the concept of mother earth contained within a face," explains Reyes. "Obviously, being on this continent is a woman with indigenous features, it would not be correct to make a female head with Hellenic, Oriental or African features."
But, as if it were a lizard's tail, the idea generates another debate: how is an indigenous woman represented? The artist defends that it has not been based on any specific community, but on "elements taken from different places": "I aspire to create a figure that, although regional, is also universal." It is, he insists, an allegory of the earth. "It is an exercise of the imagination where there must be creative freedom."
Thus he has chosen the colossal head and the jaguar eyes, characteristic of Olmec sculpture; the lips represented as a tépetl, a kind of mountain, and symbolized as two serpents that meet (“in many ancient cosmogony, including the Mexican one, there is a coincidence in representing the earth goddess with two serpents”); a turgidity in the cheekbone and jaw, and crossed braids that form an olin, "a symbol of the movement of the earth that was used to express the eruption of volcanoes, cataclysms, earthquakes."
Regarding the headdress, Reyes points out that at first he had thought of a bun, but that the anthropologist Federico Navarrete and the curator of the Museum of Anthropology Johannes Neurath warned him that the usual way of wearing hair in indigenous peoples was different.
Chose the braids.
"They are a solution for the back of the head, because a sculpture has to be interesting from all its angles," he explains.
Pedro Reyes, the sculptor of the work 'Tlali', with another of his sculptures in his house in Coyoacán.Nayeli Cruz
Successfully Finish "An Epic Endeavor"
Just two months ago, the Government of Claudia Sheinbaum proposed to Pedro Reyes to take charge of the monument. The deadline was short: it had to be ready, at the latest, in early 2022. "This is an epic undertaking, which can only be carried out collectively," argues the sculptor, who maintains that he is the head of the project. , but that the group is made up of 40 sculptors, men and women, artisans and stonework professionals.
They are working in three parts of the city: Iztapalapa, Chimalhuacán and Coyoacán. This last workshop is the one inside the spaceship. There a group of six artisans dance and prepare the blocks. One of them points to a dark, gray stone where they will carve the woman's lips. Why is it on that rock and not on another? "Because of its size, it is smaller," replies Alfredo López, who has worked with stone for 22 years.
Reyes compares these workshops with medieval ones, which allowed us to learn a trade from apprentice to teacher: “We do things that are no longer done. It is a kind of anachronism. We are working with a technique that is an anomaly in the contemporary world, it is the same form that was used for the Gothic cathedrals or the pyramids of Tenochtitlan ”. The artist believes that the award of the government commission is a very important opportunity so that the profession does not disappear.
The sculptor values his work from the last decades and the strength of his team to argue why he and not someone else (a woman, for example, as claimed on social media) has been chosen to make such a symbolic sculpture. “In the last 15 or 20 years I have felt very lonely, I have been working stone carving and practically nobody else does it. It is not so much a question of gender but a question of who has been working on this type of monumental formats ”.
Within the difficulty of the commissioned project, the controversies and the expectations created, the artist is clear about the most difficult obstacle: "For me the biggest challenge is that the piece is beautiful."
“In sculpture, form is meaning.
You cannot depend on explanations, it has to move you or radiate that strength and beauty without parapets.
It has to be eloquent without anyone being there to justify it ”, he points out,“ it also has to speak to everyone ”.
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