On January 15, my 39 birthday, I left for a very very long travel to Mexico! 🙂
Two trains, 4 flights, a 36 hours travel one way to paint in the 3rd International Festival del Arte sobre el piso ‘Colores de Chiapas’ in San Cristóbal de las Casas. Such an exciting trip to a city designated as “The most magical of the Pueblos Mágicos”.
San Cristóbal has a population of 186.000, with a high proportion of indigenous (mostly made up of Tzotzils and Tzeltals) who make a significant contribution to the thriving sector of textiles, ceramics, wrought iron and jewelry. As a municipality, the city functions as the governmental authority for rural communities outside the city proper (the most important include La Candelaria, San Antonio del Monte, Mitziton, San José Yashitinin, El Pinar, Buenavista, Pedernal, Corazon de Maria and Zacualpa Ecatepec).
Although the political capital of Chiapas was moved to Tuxtla at the end of the 19th century, San Cristóbal is considered to be the “cultural capital” of the state. The center has maintained its Spanish colonial layout, with narrow cobblestone streets and different facades from baroque to moorish, painted in strong colors. Unfortunately the last 2 earthquakes created many problems and also many of the surrounding hills have lost their native trees, in part due to cutting firewood and logging operations which feed the local manufacturing and construction industries.
I had only one day to visit the city and then 3 full days to paint my 3D piece on pavement.
My artwork, a 3×6 meters anamorphose by pastels, was dedicated to the subject of the festival: biodiversity in Chiapas.
The title is ‘Diosa Diosa indígena de la naturaleza’ and it represents a old local woman coming out from a hole with some dark water. She holds a baby armadillo in her left hand and has a green toucan on her head. She has a quite blind eye cause in she is a personification on the nature who tries to save the delicate balance beetween man and environment and it is a hard job. It is indeed complicated to mantein biodiversity nowadays. Therefore Chiapas is one the of the places that holds a very rich heritage in that sense.
The festival has been a way to meet again my friends Carlosalberto, Adry, Ruben and René and to know new artists from Mexico, Diana and Judith (my fantastic roommates), Hiram, Jesus, Noe, Irwin, David and all the others. Many childrem went to visit me and many questions from people.
I came back just after the 3 days paintings and the returning trip was really heavy too (some hours later I was working in the Library). Well, new upcoming exciting events this 2018 and I’m still realizing how this mexican trip was full of emotions and eyes and smiles…
