Molto bello l'intervento di Mariano Castillo Deball alla Galleria Pinksummer di Genova.
Foto di Francesco
Cardarelli
Tamoanchan - Mariano Castillo Deball
Press release as
interview
pinksummer:
Pierre Hadot asserted that it is stupid to judge as if we were the masters of
history and cited Augustine, claiming that the one who judges men, he is not
just the one who knows them, but also expects that they are something different
from what they actually are. Cézanne said that our egoism is mirrored by what
we perceive and Bergson elevated the veritas aesthetica to model of philosophy,
teaching to perceive beyond the enslavement of the habit, just as Roger
Caillois suggested it in his essay Estetique generalisée. Tamoanchan, by
re-presenting, or better actualizing, a myth and a symbol, looks like an
acknowledgment of belongings, no longer limited to a specific civilization, but
universal, as it recognizes nature as first creator.
Tamoanchan is a
representation of the cosmological tree, the axis mundi of the Mesoamerican
tradition, but also the primary image of the creational phytomorphism common to
all religions. The tree that connects the sky to the underground world contains
the metaphor of the fall and the nostalgia of the ascent, deeply rooted in the
symbolic imagery of the whole humankind. What is your relationship with such
archetype of tradition?
Mariana Castillo
Deball: Tamoachan is the great cosmic tree, its roots are deep in the
infraworld, and its foliage extends into the sky. The fog covers its base. The
flowers crown its branches. The two trunks twisted on each other like a spiral,
are the two opposite forces that fight to produce time.
Tamoanchan is one
in the centre of the cosmos. It is four as an assembly of poles dividing the
Sky from the Infraworld. It is five as a whole.
Tamoanchan is the
half of the cosmic tree. Its deep roots conform the world of the death, from
where the regeneration force arises. It is also one of the twisted trunks: the
cold, dark and humid.
The other half of
the tree forms the branches of light and fire where the birds are posed, the
souls of the celestial deities. From the foliage spread and slip the flowers of
the diverse destinies. This is also the warm trunk.
Tamoanchan, in
assembly, is war, sex and time.
The explorations
of Pedro Aramillas y José R. Perez in the limits of the old city of
Teotihuacan, brought into light a series of murals dated between 550 and 650
ac.
The
Tamoanchan/Tlalocan mural is one of the finest examples. On the upper part of
the mural, raises, monumental, a tree with a double trunk twisted on itself. It
is a tree loaded with different kinds of flowers. Maybe they are drunken
flowers. Flowers that disturb and transform human hearts. From the flowers
slips the nectar. The branches are covered with insects, spiders and birds. It
is with no doubt, The Tree.
An enigmatic
figure sits on the foot of the tree. It is anthropomorphic, but its features
have originated diverse interpretations. Caso considered that it was Tlaloc the
rain god wearing a mask; Kubler spoke about a feminine cult image, not
necessary a deity; Miller proposed that the figure is backwards; Sejourné
considered that the character combines elements from the fire and rain gods,
and Pasztory in the most extensive study until now, said that it is bisexual,
that the scene is Tamoachan, that the character is placed on top of a mountain
and that the figure contains the rain elements that Sejourné mentioned.
But here is more.
The two halves of the tree have opposite elements. On one half there are
shells, snails, fish, all water and cold elements. The other half depicts
flowers, minerals and warm elements.
Through the cold
branches we can see insects ascending, they are butterflies flying to the top.
On the warm branches there are spiders weaving their net, and one of them is
obviously descending hanging from a thread to the centre of the image. The spider
descends; but it counts not just because it is going down. Pasztory gives us
another intelligent association: the spider is related to dust and drought. The
forces that ascend and descend in the tree are related to the agricultural
cycle.
Again we find in
this image, both in the character and in the tree, the fight of opposite
forces.
The mural of
Tamoanchan is still in location nowadays in Tepantitla, as an archaeological
site open to visitors. Some parts of the mural are damaged, so the image is not
completely visible, but there have been several reconstructions in other
locations and documents. For pinksummer. the floor of the exhibition space
shows the reconstructed image, which doesn’t exist as a whole, and on the
walls, we present a series of paper works printed directly from the floor,
depicting the areas that are still visible at the original site.
p: Mexico City
rose up on the ashes of Tenochtitlan, the ancient capital of Nahuatl or Aztec
empire, in fact the term Aztec is a much later term, coined from the geographer
Alexander von Humboldt, in order to distinguish pre-Columbian population from
modern Mexicans.
They say that
Tenochtitlan was founded on an island in the middle of Texcoco Lake and that
was considered a sacred city such as Jerusalem.
We think at
Distanza and Menzogna in which your hand casted in porcelain acts as a
doorknocker on a mirror, alluding to the gestural impossibility to knock on
History, informed by the mirror that can only reflect the present or get
broken. Is the map of Tenochtitlan, handed on by Cortés and presented again for
the exhibition in Berlin, a secular repercussion of Tamoanchan, the place where
pictographic mythopoiesis locates the beginning of time cycle?
M. C .D.: On a
previous work exhibited at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin this year, I did the
first wooden floor piece based on what is known as the Nürnberg Tenochtitlan
map.
In 1521, a letter
and two maps arrived in Spain for the Spanish king. This was the second of
three letters, which the conquistador Hernán Cortés had sent, describing the
Aztec capital Tenochtitlan, which he and his crew had discovered and were close
to conquering. The main map was a detailed illustration of this city, and the
other map was a sketch of the nearby Mexican gulf coast. The main map seems to
reflect the conquistador’s characterization of Tenochtitlan as an enchanted
metropolis, a jewel rising up from the centre of an azure lake – an ordered,
wealthy civilization, but also a misled society centred upon heathen ritual sacrifice
instead of enlightened Christianity.
This depiction of
Tenochtitlan served to justify the expensive Spanish colonial efforts not only
to King Charles V; the 1524 publication of the map and Latin-translated letter
in Nuremburg also sparked the imaginations and support of a large European
audience. This map was the first and most widespread image which Europeans had
of Tenochtitlan and remains one of the few maps we have of the pre-colonial
Aztec empire.
Some
archaeologists now believe that this map was the result of many copies on the
way from Mexico through Spain to Nuremberg, and they also believe that the
original map was drawn by an indigenous artist, after all. The portrayal of
rows of houses and the island capital in the center of a circular lake is not
only to be found in the European mapping tradition, but also in the Aztec one.
The map also shows details that were not mentioned in Cortés letters and which
draw Aztec historical and religious references which were not understood by
Europeans during that time.
p: You have
always had a curious relationship, tainted with the ironic twist of the
paradox, with the episteme and the rigorous dogma that tends to qualify the
judgment and to confirm its validity through the method. Now you take us into the
luxurious and mythopoeic topography of Tamoanchan by showing us the cosmetic
ordering potential of the sacred, opposed by nature to the chaos and the
circumstances of becoming. Here the opaque machinery of linear progression is
replaced by the spinning dynamic of the cycle. In the cosmogony of Tamoanchan,
the art of the divination appears nearly possible, as if the outburst of nature
and its forms was permeated by intelligibility, like if the absurd could had a
law. The Florentine code conserved at Laurentian library recalls the symbolic
etimology of Tamoanchan and the meaning “to get home”. Is it inappropriate to
understand this attitude of getting home as a scatological perspective immanent
in Mother Nature? What is your relationship with the sacred and the magical?
M. C .D.:
Tamoanchan is the axis of the cosmos and the assembly of cosmic trees. It is
where the sin happened. The gods put together opposite substances, originated
sex, and with it the creation of another space, other beings, another time: the
human time. By their sinful action, the gods where punished: exiled into the
world of the death and to the surface of the earth. The gods started a new way
of existence: transformed, originated the beings of this world; but they were
already infected with death, a consequence of sex. Their existence would be
limited in time, limited in space, limited in their perceptions. They would
have in exchange the possibility to reproduce themselves.
p: All your work
is traversed by the need to actualize the abstraction, to give a physical
presence to the thought. Your work refers to the concept of translation, which
involves the idea of passing, leading beyond and implies the idea of the route,
of travelling. When you embark on a journey, we leave something behind and find
something new, something else. Translate, in its original meaning of taking
beyond, also refers to the verb betray even understood as to deliver, to
transmit. Why did you give us these transmitted/betrayed maps to walk on?
M. C .D.:
Sometimes I use the term ‘possession’, referring to the way I deal with
appropriation, embedding myself into diverse working methods and trying to
follow them. Sometimes it can be a formal experiment, like when I try to
replicate the Scagliola technique. Sometimes it’s a more intellectual or
narrative approach, where I try to catch a certain way of describing things, or
the way they study them or look at them. I try to catch the different points of
view and the different ways of relating to the world. This always starts with a
very specific question, in the case of the exhibition at pinksummer, it’s a
question about how an object survives beyond itself; it’s not just the thing in
itself, but it’s also the ghosts and the replicas that this object creates. So
then I concentrate on this question and I see how different people have
approached this object from their different points of view. Maybe it’s an
exercise in concentration. I think it’s also about retrieving myself from what
I think is right, or real, or correct. I adopt the position of the object and
follow its path.
This question
makes me think again about the historian Carlo Ginzburg. One of his working
methods is called estrangement – he uses estrangement as a tool. He tries to
retrieve himself, to imagine he’s a horse or a rabbit, in order to understand
something more clearly. If I think about that in relation to my approach to
Mexico it could also apply, because when you’re dealing with your own cultural
identity you can be tagged so easily; you could say ‘I’m a Mexican woman
artist’, or ‘I’m a Mexican woman artist who doesn’t live in Mexico but is
making work about Mexico’. There are so many things that I could be trapped by,
so I always try to be careful to escape from these preconceptions. The cultural
identity of Mexico is so strong and has so many layers, so I think that I’m
like a chess player: I’m always trying to change my position.
Pinksummer Palazzo
Ducale-Cortile Maggiore Piazza Matteotti 28r 16123 Genova Italy
