Tag: colectivo subterraneos

Postcard from Oaxaca, Mexico: ‘Nobodies’ and enslaved awaken walls

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Above: A haunting image of a tightly bound slave on his side at the bottom of a wall is one of many works emerging from the Colectivo Subterraneos.

A prior post introduced Oaxaca’s Colectivo Subterraneos along with its series of “Los Nadies” on a pink-walled house in Barrio de Xochimilco, but these figures have popped up throughout the historic center of the city.

Unlike the scrambled mix-and-match style of the figures on the pink structure, most of these “Nobodies” are privileged enough to have retained their own original bodies. Prints of slaves also plaster buildings, images so powerful that Gord Goble described them in Penticon Now as both beautiful and terrifying portrayals of “man’s inhumanity to man.”

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Postcard from Oaxaca, Mexico: ‘Nobodies’ populate walls

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Above: Detail of “Los Nadies,” or “The Nobodies,” woodblock print murals by the Colectivo Subterraneos in the Xochimilco barrio of Oaxaca

Existimos, porque resistimos. Por los oprimidos, por los invisibilizados, por aquellos que quisieron enterrar, los subterraneos, existimos.

We exist, because we resist. For the oppressed, for the invisible, for those who wanted to bury, the underground, we exist.

Artist Statement of Colectivo Subterraneos

The one-story building at the corner of Calle Jose Lopez Alavez and Calle Bolanos Cacho, Barrio de Xochimilco, was a deep burnt red color until a team of enthusiastic artists armed with rollers gave it a new coat of deep pink this fall. They quickly papered the rough stucco canvas with a series of large, exquisitely detailed woodblock prints the young artists created as part of Colectivo Subterraneos.

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