As a visual exploration of Mexican culture and identity, my intent is to reveal the invisible, the ordinary, the details evident in everyday (post)modern Mexico. In the US, we are offered up images of Mexico and Mexicanness on several levels – the primary being that of tourist and consumer, and the secondary focusing on issues of immigration and migration, issues which often make the nightly news. Intellectually, we know Mexico is much more than the commodified tourist culture which extends beyond the advertisement for FUNJET, a charter vacation company, declaring “this place is so beautiful, you would think it was made by the Gods.” Mexico is a hybrid culture, a post colonial manifestation that seemingly values and commodi€es the indigenous heritage but struggles to value the people on whose backs Mexicanness is built. In this vein, this project is also hybrid—including writing, design, photography, and collage. Drawing from the material culture, photographs of people, places and things, this work is an attempt to peel back the surface of what we are typically presented with – to discover the details and explore them as they construct the constantly changing “whole.”

Installation View, site specific
‘It is Never the Same and Always the Same’ (series)
Digital Prints on Paper
6" x 4" each (14" x 11" framed)
with Vinyl Lettering
2003-2004
 (photo: exhibition at the Crandall Gallery, Mount Union College, Alliance, Ohio, USA; January 17 – February 6, 2004)

begin details of images from ‘It is Never the Same and Always the Same’		 PROJECT COMMENTARY
We ‘know’ México is so much more complex than the politics surrounding the border crossings or the new Mexican identity cards or the Mexican restaurant on the corner. México is a hybrid culture, a post colonial manifestation that seemingly values and commodifies the indigenous heritage but struggles to value the people who signify the origins of this Mexicanness. In this vein, this project is also hybrid and focuses on the details - drawing from the material culture that is found in the public space and photographs of people, places and things - to provide a micro and macro view.

This is not intended to be a documentary of México in a strict anthropologic or ethnographic sense, but rather a poetic visual exploration which mixes photographs of people with the residue of everyday life to provide another level of meaning. I attempt to incorporate and remix this residue in order to recontextualize it – to create different, and hopefully more intense meaning.

Mexico Explosivo: The Fortune Teller
18" x 18" Digital Print on Canvas
2003



On the 4th of July at the Maya School, the Day
before Summer Vacation
18" x 18" Digital Print on Canvas
2004



I Go to Church to Take Photographs
18" x 18" Digital Print on Canvas
2003



Love Dust
18" x 18" Digital Print on Canvas
2003



Telenovela
18" x 18" Digital Print on Canvas
2004



Viva México: One Revolution Every Day
18" x 18" Digital Print on Canvas
2004



Installation View
(photo: exhibition at the Crandall Gallery, Mount Union College, Alliance, Ohio, USA; January 17 –
February 6, 2004)		 PROJECT BACKGROUND
México, like any other place but perhaps more so, is signified by its rich culture – manifested in the visual. This work is an attempt to peel back the surface of what we are typically presented with – to discover the details and explore them as they create the whole – which is greater and more vast than simply the sum of its parts.


NOTES
The body of the woman in ‘Telenovela’ by Quetzil Castañeda and used with permission. The hand painted signs were found in various parts of México with authors unknown.

The small text on the walls in the ‘It is Never the Same and Always the Same’ series is excerpted from Octavio Paz’s The Labyrinth of Solitude. These excerpts, in the following column, were chosen to exemplify the concept of ‘otherness’ and the question of identity. 		from Octavio Paz’s The Labyrinth of Solitude

Otherness is what constitutes us. I am not saying by this that the character of México—or any other people—is unique; I maintain that those realities we call cultures and civilizations are elusive. It is not that México escapes definitions: we ourselves escape them each time we try to define ourselves, to grasp ourselves.

México’s character, like that of any other people, is an illusion, a mask; at the same time it is a real face. It is never the same and always the same. It is a perpetual contradiction. Each time we affirm one part of us, we deny another.

The history of every people contains certain invariable elements, or certain elements whose variations are so slow as to be imperceptible. What do we know of those invariables and the forms in which they join together or separate?

…there is neither inside or outside, and otherness is not there, beyond, but here, within: otherness is ourselves. Duality is not something added, artificial, or exterior: it is our constituent reality. Without otherness there is no oneness. …otherness is oneness made manifest, the way in which it reveals itself. Otherness is a projection of oneness: the shadow with which we battle in our nightmares. And, conversely, oneness is a moment of otherness…the past reappears because it is a hidden present.

PROJECT RESOURCES

Contact Maria Rogal

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The following institutions have enabled my research in this area:
US Department of Education/Fulbright Hays Seminar Program
University of Florida College of Fine Arts Scholarship Enhancement Fund.



copyright 2003 - 2005 maria rogal. all rights reserved.