In this site-responsive work, made for the quarrying site at the Cerro de las Mitras, the foothill of one of Monterrey`s landmarking mountains, where parts of the mountain are mined for cement production, despite it being part of the National Park, Sierra Madre Oriental. Repensando El Triunfo de la Cultura (Rethinking El Triunfo de la Cultura) refers to the Camarenda mural, where he captured the daily triumph of civilization and culture over the dark forces of stagnation and apathy. Lending three symbols of Development from Camarendas mural: the maize plant from agriculture, industry in a gear, culture in an arrow and engineering in a set square, I recreated them as 3D virtuals and in Styrofoam, another fossile material, invented in 1941, meant to isolate and build structure in modernist architecture, with a closed cell structure of 98% air. These three symbols, that often occur in Mexican modernist murals, are also academic principles that Tec recognizes and proposes as the foundation of its creation and vocation.

A group of people made a performative walk and a site-responsive installation exploring ecological interconnections between Mexico and Norway, especially through those of trade of mineral, fossil and composite materials, reflecting on extraction, technology - thus the infrastructures and economies forming global landscapes. Repensando El Triunfo de la Cultura (Rethinking El Triunfo de la Cultura) invites us to become with the sediments of time – the past, the present and the future.

The project is supported by Norwegian Crafts / Laboratorio Arte AC / TEC de Monterrey
Photos: Oscar Figueroa and Daniel García