Art Lies, Volume 66, Summer 2010 Page: 79
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L. Margarita Cabrera, Space In Between, 2010; in collaboration with Maria
Lopez, Candelaria Cabrera, Delfina Medina, Doris Lindo, Miguel DeLuna,
Carlos Calles, Esmeralda Perez, Nora Oviedo, Teresa Sanchez Garay; U.S.
Border Patrol uniforms, copper wire, foam, embroidery thread, terracotta
pots; partial commission by Ballroom Marfa
R. Maximo Gonzalez, Inflation, 2004/2010; installation of 1,000 mylar balloons,
each 18 inches in diameter, blown up with helium gas; courtesy of the artistgiven away as souvenirs at the exhibition opening, acting as surrogate
value and augmenting personal memory.
Elements of Pedro Reyes' ongoing project Palas por pistolas, a pris-
tine shovel and a tree sapling, stand like centurions at the entrance of
Ballroom Marfa's South Gallery. The shovel bears a branded inscription on
its wooden handle, declaring that 1,527 weapons were destroyed to make
1,527 shovels to plant 1,527 trees. Not simply another gardening project,
Reyes' attempts to generate a "social metamorphosis" through Palas Por
Pistolas. The project was originally commissioned for the botanical garden
in Culiacan, a city in western Mexico with the highest number of gun
deaths in the country. In Culiacan Reyes spoke with many people who
knew family members or others who had been shot. This prompted him
to organize a campaign in cooperation with the city, collecting weapons
in exchange for food stamps and melting the weapons into shovel heads
to be used to plant trees in Culiacan and beyond, in this case, Marfa. By
removing the weapons from circulation and repurposing their materials,
these "agents of death [are] turned into agents of life," commented Reyes
in Sculpture magazine.
Also in the South Gallery is Teresa Margolles' Irrigaci6n, which includes
a presentation of Mexican newspapers and a video. Margolles, a found-
ing member of the group SEMEFO (Servicio Medico Forense/Forensic
Medical Service), used cloth to collect debris and sediment from various
mass burial sites in Juarez, where the murders of young factory work-
ers-killings graphically depicted in the Mexican and American news
media-continue unabated. The cloth was soaked in large drums of water,releasing, redistributing and dissolving sediment, blood and remains.
The video shows a truck spraying this water along a border highway,
simultaneously contaminating and cleansing to make clear a somber and
disturbing message: the reality of wasted life and resources.
Off-site, running parallel to the railroad tracks that bisect Marfa,
Tercerunquinto erected the architectural "intervention" WHAT YOU SEE IS
NOT WHAT IT IS. Tercerunquinto, the collective project of three Mexican
artists, understands (and translates) space in semantic terms, using archi-
tecture as a useful system (language) to be segmented and manipulated
for various purposes and meanings. Here the text is cut from a freestand-
ing wall of metal and formed by the resulting negative space. The piece
is framed by-yet competes with-the built environment and passing
locomotives, driving home the transient nature of existence and com-
munication. In place of objective solutions for such subjective tensions,
the artists of In Lieu of Unity remind us that because relationships of any
kind are complicated and nuanced, unity is not always a desired or even
possible condition. If we are to survive, we must negotiate alternative
engagements.
Nancy Zastudil is a nomadic curator and freelance writer whose research
focuses on collective art practices that operate in the service of revolution and
social progress.79 ART LIES NO. 66
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Gupta, Anjali. Art Lies, Volume 66, Summer 2010, periodical, 2010; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth228031/m1/81/?q=%22Puleo%2C+Risa%22: accessed June 8, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .