An Interpretation of the Sonnet of the Stars
Jesús “Bubu” Negrón
Requiem
Emilio Chapela
Shake It Out!
Nuria Montiel
Opening on July 10, 2013
Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros
3 Picos 29, Colonia Polanco
México City
T 5203 5888/5531 3391
www.saps-latallera.org
Facebook | Twitter
The Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros (SAPS) presents three new commissions by Jesús “Bubu” Negrón (b. 1975, Puerto Rico), Emilio Chapela (b.1978, Mexico) and Nuria Montiel (b.1982, Mexico). On this occasion, SAPS directs its discourse toward contemporary interpretations of historical notions. Chapela and Montiel researched the Siqueiros Archive. Negrón addressed issues of labor and historical representation to pay tribute to a little-known poet. The latter was the result of a two-month residency at SAPS-La Tallera.
An Interpretation of the Sonnet of the Stars (Homage to Esteban Valdés) by Jesús “Bubu” Negrón is an exhibition centered on Esteban Valdés, a concrete poet born in Mexico and raised in Puerto Rico. In a multimedia installation, Negrón reinterpreted one of his best-known poems the “Sonnet of the Stars” (1977) into an action, a video and a sculptural carpet made out of wood resin, pointing to the history of a poet who developed his writing to actively work toward labor rights in Puerto Rico.
In order to introduce Valdés to the Mexican artistic context, Negrón assumed the position of a mediator between the museum and historical processes disregarded by the cannon. In collaboration with Taller Tlamaxcalli (a local craft workshop) Negrón developed his carpet in a folkloric style to validate those modes of production, while approaching the tension between a craft-based skill and the practice of the contemporary artist. Negrón also initiated the first collaboration between SAPS and La Tallera. On July 2, 2013, the performance version of the poem was enacted at La Tallera with 77 students and teachers from the city of Cuernavaca.
In Requiem, Emilio Chapela restructured the system of organization in the library of David Alfaro Siqueiros and treats this replica as a new strategy to navigate the muralist’s collection. Revealing of his worldview is the fact that Siqueiros organized over 2,000 books in three main categories: Art, Politics and Others. Considering this classification as an entry point, Emilio studied the library and pointed to the contrasts in terms of content, hidden by the previous system.
Maintaining the original categories, Chapela created exact copies of all the books in wood. Respectively, the colors red, blue and yellow located on the spine of each book represent Art, Politics and Others. Although Siqueiros only read Spanish, English and French, his library contains texts in Russian, Japanese, Greek, Chinese, English, Italian and German. In the replica, these are shown with other colors, the duplicate allowing for further interpretations of Siqueiros’s political standpoint. For Chapela, Requiem can be appreciated as a funeral procession that refers to the library’s conceptualization.
Lastly, Shake It Out! is performance series by Nuria Montiel inspired by photographs of protests in the Americas part of the Siqueiros Archive. It stresses the aesthetic relationship between social upheavals and body movements. The actions reference what Montiel considers as the poetics of discontent—those traditional acts exercised during manifestations, such as banners and marches.
By leading a group of collaborators, Montiel takes the museum’s entrance and develops a theater of shadows inspired by images of social unrest, such as the beating of drums, the distortion of a megaphone, pot-banging or the movement of a body governed by an anarchic motion. With ink, this narrative will be imprinted on the entrance of the museum. The performers make impressions with body paint, stencils and other gestures.
With a keen interest in printmaking, Montiel’s artistic practice focuses on strategies of participation in the public sphere. Shake It Out! is a production for Proyecto Fachada that questions the purpose of the “poetics of discontent” in contemporary society.
