2501 Migrantes, XIV Anniversary of MACO

By Askari Mateos
With dual purpose, the earth (clay) both replaces and pays tribute to those people who have left their homelands in search of The American Dream. On February 24th at 7:30 p.m., as part of the 14th anniversary celebration of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Oaxaca (MACO), Alejandro Santiago (d.o.b. 1964) launches part of a series of sculptures which has already received worthy recognition by the Rockefeller Foundation: 2501 Migrantes.

It’s taken this native of Teococuilco de Marcos Pérez, Sierra Norte, three years to produce half of the pieces of art for this project, dedicated to his family and village. But the work which is now known as 2501 Migrantes was actually born in a large house at the end of fields under cultivation with alfalfa, radishes and tomatoes, in the municipality of Santiago Suchilquitongo, Etla. At last the fruits of his labor are progressing along the path towards recognition under a critical eye, about a theme reflective of a closing chapter in today’s reality. At least to the extent that a component of the artistic community is generating work which is not conducive to thought-provoking socio-political discussion, it would appear that in Oaxaca not much is happening to raise the bar, and our “artists” are following a path of complacent shortsightedness in which tradition and imagery are the totality, or of certainty of a career characterized by artistic frugality.

For Santiago, art merges with social protest in a melting pot of arid land, wherein Oaxacan communities are shaped before your eyes just as a plain up in flames is transformed with a series of waves.

Santiago is another of those who left his homeland as a child to complete his education in the city of Oaxaca…where he discovered painting. But 20 years later, so as to enable him to recall his roots he had to return, and that’s when he saw how many things had changed as a result of migration: “All the rocky pathways upon which I used to run along as a child had disappeared.”

To him, to be sure, “(e)migration is a necessary evil of the system; in societies it’s an absurd necessary reality…government bears the blame for not implementing public policies to stop it.”

And so it is that the critical eye can conceive of the project like recollecting the thousands of Terracotta Warriors dug up from the Qin Shi Huang tomb; or the famous Moais, the giant human stone hewn sculptures discovered in the Easter Islands in 1722; perhaps related to the Atlantes of Tula or the Giant Olmec heads. In and of itself 2501 Migrantes is an anthropological study and an expression of the highest humanistic sense, conceived of a forceful analysis of migration as a social phenomenon.

As explained by Sanitago, 2501 Migrantes “is a tribute to those who have fallen in the line of fire, provides dignity for those who are already there and are unfairly discriminated against, and enables those who stay to reflect. Every piece of sculpture attempts to enable each one of us to identify with them, naked as migrants, part of the reality in which we live.

Moreover, 2501 Migrantes was a call for the participation of many (artists and craftspersons), with a view to once again positively raising awareness regarding migration.

With the 2501 Migrantes exhibition MACO celebrates its 14th anniversary which includes in its agenda several activities in which the central theme is migration. And it’s with this added extraordinary effort of Santiago returning art to its proper place as a strong influence in our society that we can appreciate the pieces as constituting a testament to the phenomenon, here and abroad.