I usually focus on current artwork and projects in this blog, but sometimes I like to pull something out of the past and that is what I'm doing in this post.
In the Fall of 2008 I participated in Earlham College's study abroad program in Mexico. A group of students and professors from Earlham spent about four months in Cuautla, Morelos, a two hour or so drive south of Mexico City. It was a really fantastic and challenging semester and I would go back in a heartbeat. We took courses in Spanish, 20th century Mexican History, Mexican Literature, The Economic and Environmental Issues that Mexico currently faces, and Social Movements from the last three decades. I stayed with a welcoming and lovely host family and I got the opportunity to travel to Oaxaca, Puebla, Guanajuato, San Miguel de Allende, Cuernavaca, and Guererro during my time there. I didn't see a single beach though, which seems silly since Mexico is known for its beautiful beaches, but I went back in the Fall of 2011 and did the beaches.
Each of us also had an internship or field placement that allowed us to get involved with an aspect of the community such as schools, markets, stores, in one case a bicycle repair shop. My field placement was working with local artist Rolando Guillermoprieto on a 4' x 8' mural telling the story of the Conquest of Mexico by the Spanish in the early 1500's. It was an incredibly violent conflict, but our focus was really of the clash of ideas, cultures, and traditions, and the later fusion of Spanish and Mexican cultures. It was one of my absolute favorite aspects of the semester and probably one of the coolest things I've done in my life thus far.
The picture below is the finished mural. I completed the semester by writing a 20 page paper in Spanish about the mural's iconography, the history it represents, and the process of painting it. I am just going to summarize it for you in English!
Long before we arrived at this finished piece, we created sketches of all the different aspects of the mural. Most details were planned out in advance but of course some evolved as we went.
These are my sketches of Quetzalcoatl, the plumed serpent god with his human form emerging from the mouth of the serpent.
I also did a drawing of Tenochtitlán, the Aztec floating city. The lake has long been filled in and is now Mexico City. When the Spanish first arrived, Tenochtitlán was estimated to have a population of about 300,000 people-- larger than any city in Europe at the time. The Conquistadors would never have seen anything like this before.
Rolando and I collaborated on the representation of Tenochtitlán in the finished piece:
There are multiple ways you can read this mural-- the first is the seascape at the bottom of the composition. On the left, we have the so called "New World" (a problematic term, but that was how the Europeans saw it) and on the right are the Spanish ships making their way West. This is also a reference to maps, where West is usually to the left with East is to the right. In the sky we have masks from different cultures in Mexican history. From left to right: Olmec, Maya, early Tenochtitlán, Toltec, and two Aztec masks. I totally painted all those masks. I was super proud of them. I also painted the clear blue sky. Rolando painted the dark sky on the right representing the approaching conflicts with the Spanish. In the sky above the ships are horses, which the Spanish brought to the Americas. They also reference the double meaning of "nightmares," again speaking to the impending conflict.
The circle on the far right also represents the clash of the powerful Aztec and Spanish cultures in the form of the meeting of Quetzalcoatl with Hernan Cortes. Cortes was the leader of the Conquistadors and in fact Moctezuma II, the Aztec ruler at the time welcomed him and his men, believing that they were incarnations of Gods or characters from an Aztec legend. Did you see the cartoon film The Road to El Dorado? I mean, we could deconstruct a whole lot of mis-representations and stuff in that movie, but the idea for the plot line didn't come from nowhere.
The center circle is a face off between Moctezuma II and Cortes who appear as larger-than-life apparitions in the sky above the "Venice of the New World" Tenochtitlán and the surrounding mountains decorated with subtle Aztec designs-- executed by yours truly along with the clouds! I did most of the clouds in this mural because I LOVE CLOUDS. I also painted Moctezuma II. Cortes was painted by Rolando.
"Who is that lady between these two very powerful men?" you may be asking. She is Marina, also known as "La Malinche." She was a slave in the Aztec Empire who learned Spanish served as Cortes' translator. Supposedly she was also his lover and legend has it that they had a child-- Mexico's first half Spanish half Indigenous person, but that has not been proven or disproven. Without La Malinche as a translator, Rolando believes the Conquest would not have been a success for the Spanish. She was Cortes' voice and therefore is arguably one of the most important women in Mexican History during one of its most pivotal moments.
The Aztecs did quite a bit of human sacrifice and their ideal sacrifice victims were fifteen year old boys with perfect skin. Good luck finding that! Am I right? Um, anyway, it was not fun to be their neighbors because they would roll into your village and find all your acne-free teenage boys and ritually kill them. They killed a lot of other people as sacrifices too. There was a lot of death. So when the Spanish showed up with their horses and their guns, a lot of people were all for them taking the Aztecs out of power. La Malinche, being enslaved by the Aztecs, I imagine would have had plenty of reason to want them out of power as well. Because of her role in the Conquest and her profound impact on history, she appears as a Goddess, and of the three faces, hers is the most prominent.
Finally, the panel at the far left shows two Goddesses representing different religious traditions in Mexico: The form of the Aztec Tierra Madre (Mother Earth), Tonantzin is visible in the mountains. She is lying down with two legs bent, her knees forming the tops of the mountains.
In the sky is La Virgen Guadalupe, who appeared in 1531, ten years after the conquest and performed miracles such as healing and making roses grow on a barren hilltop. Some theorize that perhaps she was fabricated by the Spanish to encourage the people of Mexico to convert to Catholicism, as she was a Virgin like the Virgin Mary, but was a Mexican woman. Either way, she has a very devout following in Mexico to this day. Her image is everywhere. There is even a water mark in the subway of Mexico city that is shaped like her. It has a little shrine around it. I visited the water mark Virgen de Guadalupe when I was in Mexico City! She shows up on toast sometimes too, and trees, and stuff like that.
In our Mural, La Virgen is surrounded by cherubs at her feet whose faces are Rolando's grandchildren. He added them in as a hidden personal touch. These two goddesses together represent the meeting and co-existing of these different traditions in Modern Mexico. The Conquest was in so many ways a period of conflict and cultural upheaval in Mexico, but the fusion of Spanish and Mexican cultures really made the country what it is today-- diverse and colorful. I remember Rolando telling me that the "New World" need not refer to the Mexico that the Spanish "found" but the one was created when the civilizations combined.
Creating this mural was incredibly eye opening and fascinating to me. I consider myself very lucky to have gotten to work with him. He is an amazingly talented artist and a living encyclopedia of Mexican History and Art History. He also had many fascinating stories about his life-- I remember just sitting in his studio listening to everything from Flamenco guitar to Justin Timberlake while we painted and he talked about life and art and history. Basically, it totally rocked and I am so very thankful for the experience.
