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:
Enthusiastic authors like Serge Louis can make Street Art sing, even in print. His new “Stencilists/Pochoiristes” is a finely illustrated hardcover of iconic images from the street. The carefully sel...
With giant murals at the forefront of the message, a recent Manhattan campaign of select walls is intended to make us talk and keep our eyes on an ugly social justice issue that organizers hope we ca...
Yellow legged frogs don’t know who the president is. Either do Shasta Crayfish. Regardless, both of these species are facing extinction and endangered, respectively. Are you doing anything about t...
It was very agreeable to stroll around Bushwick, Brooklyn on Sunday; the weather golden and sunny for the few hours of daylight that December allows us. They say we’re going to get a foot of snow dum...
Nychos, the distinguished Austrian illustrator, urban artist, graffiti artist, and muralist, has gained international acclaim for his incisive and scientifically anatomical creations exhibited ac...