Tag: museo de arte contemporaneo de oaxaca

Postcard from Oaxaca, Mexico: Santiago’s ‘Migrants’ and protesters haunting MACO

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Above, nine “migrants” from Alejandro Santiago’s “2501 Migrantes” haunt a balcony inside Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, MACO

There is a Zapotec saying…. “Why leave when you have it all here?”

Alejandro Santiago in 2501 Migrants: A Journey, directed by Yolanda Cruz, 2010
two of alejandro santiago's 2501 migrantes

“Returning to his native Mexican village after many years, the artist was startled by what he didn’t see. ‘Where are my friends, my relatives?’ Alejandro Santiago asked the remaining residents of the town, Teococuilco de Marcos Perez, in a remote mountain area of Oaxaca state. Upon learning that most of them migrated from southern Mexico to the United States in search of work, he vowed to honor the departed and ‘repopulate’ his impoverished hometown.”

“Alejandro Santiago dies at 49,” Valerie J. Nelson, Los Angeles Times, July 28, 2013

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Postcard from Oaxaca, Mexico: Blurring boundaries between art and craft and embroidering border politics

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I don’t think about the differences between art and craft. It gets in the way of seeing what is there. Did I teach them anything? No, Las Hormigas did not need me to teach them anything…. working together confirmed that we are more the same than different.

Fred Escher on collaboration with Taller Hormigas Bordadoras

Curator Marietta Bernstorff paired 13 artists from throughout North America with artisans from workshops engaged in traditional crafts in Oaxaca for an exhibition currently displayed at Museo MACO, Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Oaxaca. Tinwork, ceramics, gourd-carving and stitchery are among the forms of art employed in “Bajo la bóveda azul cobalto/Under the Cobalt Blue Sky.”

The majority of these photos reflect the results of these collaborations that can be viewed through March 20, 2019.

Fred Escher and Taller Hormigas Bordadoras
Andy Medina
Fred Escher and Taller Hormigas Bordadoras
Fred Escher and Taller Hormigas Bordadoras
Fred Escher and Taller Hormigas Bordadoras
Fred Escher and Taller Hormigas Bordadoras
Fred Escher and Taller Hormigas Bordadoras
Fred Escher and Taller Hormigas Bordadoras
Fred Escher and Taller Hormigas Bordadoras
Fred Escher and Taller Hormigas Bordadoras
detail of “El Artista,” Sandra Del Pilar, 2017

This exposition is a demonstration of what can happen when we accept our differences and our similarities; it is an example of coexistence under the same blanket of stars.

“Bajo la bóveda azul cobalto,” website of MACO