Pimping Your Ride Via Indigenous Traditions
Applying beads to the “Vochol” (Vocho + Huichol) Image from the Facebook page of Museo de Arte Popular.
Mexico’s Indigenous people have been making art from millenia. When the Spanish invaded and conquered what’s now modern Mexico in 1492 they found complex metropolis, their buildings decorated with intricately carved sculptures and brightly colored painting. The painful conquest didn’t annihilate their passion for art making and in modern times their new works of elaborate pieces of art are often displayed in museums’ collections.
For the opening, some of the artists appeared in traditional garb of The Huichol, an indigenous ethnic group of western central Mexico
For this piece eight members of two Huichol families took the task to create a piece of art, seven months in the making, by using more than two million glass beads and a vintage Volkswagen as a canvas. Inspired by the designs of Francisco Bautista, a patriarch of one of the families, they incorporated their traditional indigenous theologies and cultural symbols with modern vernacular.
The serpents on the the front design represent “rain”, while the the roof is decorated with the sun and four eagles. Birds were thought to be the intermediaries between gods and mortals. The rear part and sides are tributes or “ofrendas” of fruits of the earth to their gods.
The piece will be shown at Museo de Arte Popular for a period of time and then the four wheeled piece will be go on tour in Europe and the in the rest of the Americas. Finally the piece will be sold at auction with the proceeds of the sale to benefit the programs of the museum.
Other Articles You May Like from BSA:
For graffiti artists today, deconstructing the letterform is more popular than you may imagine, and in our experience, leads to even greater things. SODA (photo © Andor Ivan) After 20+ years or s...
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities. Now screening : 1. Skewville and Two Dead Rats on Wire 2. Farewell: Velibre 3. Park Rituals" with HOT...
Lister’s plane is on the tarmac and Olek is dragging a shopping cart full of art materials past the Vietnamese restaurant on Zietanstrasse and a block away two ladies in very high heeled boots and s...
The street sticker, be it ever so humble and diminutive, is profligate and sometimes even inspiring. An amalgamated scene that is anonymous, yet curiously stuck together, the organizers and sponsors ...
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities. Now screening: La Catedral Futumétrica with EC13 + El Niño De Las Pinturas + Spidertag, Meggs and FareSh...