Hi Eduardo,
How are you doing? Are you getting along with your work for WGA?
Last week I did find my slide projector and I scanned some of the slides, because I also wanted to show them with a lecture Valeria, Andrea, Jorge and I gave about the WGA project last Sunday. Jorge and I were showing both our work and also talked about our participation in this project.
I told you my first encounter with Mexico was ten years ago. I had made sure to be there during the Dia de los Muertos festivities. My slides therefore not only show many churches, saints and landscapes, but also stacks of skeletons, skulls, bones, graveyards and marigolds. Here are some:
Images familiar to you no doubt, but very new and impressive to me they were. I started the lecture with a slide of the Central Library building at the UNAM campus in your city. The building was in a book I had as a kid with the one hundred world wonders in it. So I absolutely had to see that wonder, which became Unesco World Heritage two years ago. I liked it and still like it very much. It looked so beautiful and the concept is also great. The building houses one of the largest collections in Mexico, over 400,000 books, and the murals that cover the library are made of tiles that come from all over the country, for the many colours needed.
We talked several times about the histories of both our countries, in the case of Mexico also a history that happened to be depicted in the murals of the Central Library. At the beginning of the blog you told you have a background as a painter. To my surprise you contributed to the mural paintings in the Copilco Metro station. This station I used together with many students when I was on my way to the Central Library building ten years ago. The station must have been work grounds for you for a certain period of time.
I agree with you that the achievements of modern science and technology enable miracles in themselves. To me it still can feel magical that I have been able to visit a place I wanted to see at the other side of the world. I’ve been brought there in a flying tube out of metal that’s climate and pressure controlled. An underground system rushed me to the building I wanted to see, that has modern achievements on one of it four walls.
Through you I meet with Mexico for a second time. This time it is not the religious and folkloristic Mexico I wanted to visit ten years ago, but the Mexico of an artist living in one of the largest cities in the world. We contact eachother through another wonder of technology: the internet. Something that wouldn’t be possible ten years ago. Here you tell me about your ideas, show me books and your work. I want to do something with the contrast between my first Mexican encounter and the second one with you. On the one hand the folkoristic, religious, historical Mexico and on the other the scientific, urban, educated Mexico. I want to capture them in one piece of jewellery. They are to be one.
Eduardo, all best and hope to hear from you. Peter
