On December 17th 1993, a group of Mexicans of predominantly Maya origin, formally declared constituted the formation of a regular army, the “Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional”. On 1st January 1994, their war declaration against the Mexican government came out to public. This action caught off guard the federal government and surprised the many inactive or nearly vanished original people of Mexico.
The political and social mark of the moment was determined under the promise of “entering the First World” through the signing of the Free Trading Agreement of North America, between USA and Canada. From that moment on, the Second-in-Command Marcos assumed the public voice of EZLN, with whom Felipe Ehrenberg had worked over a decade before. Quickly the insurgents left aside their initial Marxist-Leninist speech, to retake the essential themes of the country and the world, with sense of humour and certain tendency to poetry, a bit unusual to...an armed group. Notifications such as “Of what are they going to forgive us?” or “Chiapas: the southeast in two winds, a storm and a prophecy”, would embellish the political Zapatista speech with the sarcastic, and sometimes raw, tone that characterized it.
The artistic installation of Felipe Ehrenberg presented in this Kubikulo is composed by 7 crutches that have been exposed at the subway station of Pino Suarez, in central Mexico City and have been produced by the artist, being now exposed for the first time in Portugal.
“I do this because the social invalids of those days continue to arise”
Felipe Ehrenberg was born in Tlocopac, Mexico, in 1943. He became a painter, sculptor and printmaker under the guardianship of masters such as Matthías Goeritz e José Chávez Morado. Artist, chronicler, archivist, professor, political, diplomate, editor, actor, organizer, traveller, restless, his polyfacetic personality makes difficult a clear definition of his work, thence his definition of himself as a neologist: highlighting the experimentation and constant renovation of his work. He was the founder of Beau Geste Press and co-participant of the Fluxus movement through his stay in England (1968-1976), the artist deals with essential matters of post-modernity, related to the construction of the national identity. He questions the information system, bureaucratic and institutional and, above all, the image of his own country.
Imágenes de la Exposición
Felipe Ehrenberg
Entrada actualizada el el 20 abr de 2015
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