Activist Vicky Hamlin, a retired tradeswoman, shop steward, and painter, shines the light — in her art and in this column — on the lives of working people and the world they live in.
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The Colegio de Ildefonso, cradle of the mural movement, celebrates 100 years of this pictorial movement with new artists.
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Tucked away near a corner at the top of the stairs in this beautiful old colonial building in México City is a room full of surprise.
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This was the exhibition called Muralismo y resistencia (Muralism and resistance), murals by jóvenes artístas urbanos (young urban artists). I walked in to see first a scaffold in front of an empty wall (a work in progress) and then 4 long, huge, gorgeous walls of thoughtful, articulate, sparkling, wildly divergent images of youthful worlds. The concept of resistance can mean such different things. And picturing it, bringing it to life, is a whole ‘nother thing.
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At the very far corner, wrapped tightly into that corner and immediately eye-catching, is a piece by Baltasar Castellan Melo (@baltasar_melo_) titled La muerte de las culturas, el México negro. It does one of the things that murals do best — tells a long historical story.
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The images, the techniques, the paint medium and the mixed media so cleverly used all point to the inevitable ending to this long journey for Melo. He knows how to use cadence and rhythm, so we follow along with him on this journey. This narrative ends up firmly in the present. In that sense he makes an ancient but universal story very personal and even intimate.
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Just across the hall is a radiant dive into a world of neon color by master draftsman Dyg’Nojoch (@dyghojoch), called Muk ‘ta luch (El gran bordado).
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Here, artificially imposed borders disappear, and the original people reclaim their history and memories.This piece lights up the darkness (literally!) and shines a light as night becomes day in this evolving documentation of the time and place of indigenous culture.
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The mural by Paola Delfin (@paola_delfin), Movimiento perpetuo, is the first piece you see as you come into this room.
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It is in shades of gray, and feels like a gentle tonal embrace. Delfin’s work reads feminine in the bodies and gestures she captures but don’t mistake this for a simple, spineless kind of femininity. The central image is a maternal figure that definitely embraces sexuality, and the motion, the vibrancy of her figures, the intensity of her line all disallow the idea of a subservient kind of beauty. She belongs to herself.
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Pilar Cárdenas (@fusca667) paints a different picture. In Diego y La cuarta dimension, Diego Rivera hands over his reins of muralismo to Cárdenas, and she takes us into her internal world of dreams and musings that go past Diego’s influence.
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She lights up from inside with her own illumination. A soft color palette further supports the sense of being gentle with herself, a message that we all, women especially, need to hear. Her composition guides us along, ending in a place of personal discovery and ownership.
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One of the interesting things about this room is the interplay between the murals. Of course, the boys are at one end, the girls at another. There are obvious comparisons here but the similarities and differences go deeper than that. There is shared history spoken here. Variety and happiness, pain and learning, knowledge and spontaneity, risk-taking and sophisticated technique, bounce all over this room. These murals represent a new mural way of thinking — youth accepts the reins from the old masters and surges ahead.
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And there was the empty scaffold, waiting to be used, to start a new phase. History is not over yet…
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