Mexican sculptor Marcos Ramirez has never been afraid to confront shameful little secrets or reveal hypocrisy. Take his 1997 sculpture of a 33-foot, two-headed Trojan horse on the border of San Ysidro and Tijuana, which seemed to ask the question: "Who is invading whom?" Or his statement on the U.S.' immigration policies through a unique tribute to Jasper Johns' American flag series--reimagining the Stars and Stripes as a corrugated metal fence on the border.
Ramirez is one artist who lives and breathes the political.
"I want my work to be universally visual," he said on a recent visit to Los Angeles from his home in Tijuana. "I may speak of local issues, but they are universal issues. I am not a border artist. The work I make has to do with cultural frontiers."
And now it is time to turn his satirical, incisive eye to his homeland. The 35-year-old artist's stinging critique of Mexico and its countrymen is on display in "Oro por Espejos" (Gold for Mirrors), which opened Friday at the Iturralde Gallery. The exhibition, which features three massive carved wooden sculptures, one large iron cross, some paintings and installations, inaugurates the gallery's new, larger space.
Ramirez tried to address the three eras of Mexican culture that continue to cause a tremendous national identity crisis: the pre-Columbian, the Colonial and the contemporary.
"I had to have the guts to make a critique of my own country," said Ramirez, who also goes by "Erre"--the Spanish pronunciation of the letter R. "The essence of this exhibit is recovering the pride of who we were and then dealing with the Spanish past. It's like a cathartic thing. We shouldn't forget our past, but we need to get rid of our complexes and hang-ups so Mexico can be a better country."
Ramirez is a child of the border, raised in a bicultural world where he visited Los Angeles more often than his own country's capital city. His parents moved from Guadalajara to the border with hopes of crossing into the United States. They eventually did, but when Ramirez's mother was about to give birth, they returned so he could be born a Mexican national.
It was a frontier existence he led, with half of his family in the U.S. and his siblings and parents in Mexico.
His journey to becoming an artist is also a peculiarly Mexican border tale. When he graduated from college with a law degree in the early '80s, Mexico's economy suffered one of the most calamitous peso devaluations in history. It threw the country into economic turmoil.
Ramirez could not find a job. So he came across the border illegally. He slept in his car and eventually found work as a construction worker. Within a few years, he became a legal resident and started a construction business. Although he never studied art, Ramirez showed a creative side, always sketching and drawing from the time he was a child. Even when he went into construction, he would plan ways of creating art with the skills he learned as a carpenter and laborer. With his proceeds, he would purchase materials to make art.
Virtually unknown, Ramirez was invited to create a piece for "inSITE94," the big binational show that features installation art in Tijuana and San Diego. His work, "Century 21," was a one-room shanty placed on the plaza of Tijuana's Centro Cultural. In his review of the show, Times art critic Christopher Knight said it was art "of a particularly devastating sort. . . . Ramirez has counterposed the grand plaza of an officially sanctioned centro cultural with a stark example of the actual cultural center of the city's teeming life."
It turned out to be one of the most critically well-received pieces of the show. Based on this success, Ramirez was invited back for "inSITE97," co-organized by Mexico's influential National Council for Culture and the Arts.
One day, while waiting in line at the hellacious border crossing, Ramirez was thunderstruck by an idea: What if he built an enormous sculpture here? What if everyone who drove back and forth, waiting hours in that line under the hot, dusty sun, could be prompted to think about the foolishness of these man-made borders?
So, he built his now-famous Trojan horse for "inSITE97." It is estimated that nearly 13 million people saw his work of art as they drove across the country lines. The horse seemed to say that the invasion is a two-way street.
"They invade us with imperialism and commercialism," he said. "We invade them, like Carlos Fuentes said, chromosomally, with people. We make them eat tacos instead of hamburgers."
This year, Ramirez was selected for the Whitney Biennial, only one of three Mexican natives ever chosen for the exhibition. For the show, Ramirez made "Stripes and Fence Forever--Homage to Jasper Johns," a tribute to Johns' iconographic renderings of the American flag. He painted a corrugated metal wall as the flag, chemically treating it to resemble a worn-out fence. The fence sits on a 9-foot-square area of soil, dividing the dirt into two sides. One side is held in by a series of bricks, all uneven and handmade. The other side is held in by perfectly cut-out cinder blocks.
"It's the same dirt," he said. "But the brick is the Mexican part, it's imperfect artisanry. The U.S. is the cinder block; everything has to be perfect, made the exact size. It's like an artificial fence. It's a border that 150 years ago was not there. Who knows if it will be there 150 years from now."
With the "Oro por Espejos" exhibit, his art will leave the border and delve deep into the heart of Mexico. It will be his first exhibit tackling the contradictions and problems of his native land.
Mexicans, he declares, are the children of a rape. The trauma of the Spanish conquest is still fresh, despite that it happened almost 500 years ago. So, his work is an exploration of that bizarre fusion of races that occurred when Hernan Cortes' soldiers landed in Mexico and mixed with the Indians to create the mestizo. When the Aztec emperor Moctezuma saw Cortes, he mistakenly believed him to be the incarnation of the Aztec god, Quetzalcoatl. In his folly, Moctezuma received the Spaniard and his men with gold, women, fine cloth and feathers. The Spaniards gave mirrors to the Indians, hence the name of the exhibit.
The exhibition features four major pieces. The first is called "Presidential Bed." The king-size bed frame depicts the pre-Columbian, Colonial and contemporary eras and is carved out of fine Mexican mahogany, with baroque yet indigenous touches that betray the curious blend of the European with the Indian--something also evident in some of Mexico's most important cathedrals. The bed is installed in a large room, hinting at the largess of the Mexican presidency.
"A president--especially a Mexican president--cannot have a small room or bed, particularly because Mexicans have had these pretensions of being French," said the artist, referring to the French influence on Mexico's upper classes when they invaded the country in the 19th century.
The headboard is emblazoned with the national insignia of an eagle devouring a snake--a symbol of freedom over the treacherous serpent. But Ramirez's twist has the snake biting the eagle. The bed is surrounded by 700 pounds of corn kernels--symbol for the Aztecs' holy food. Instead of a mattress, the bed is lined with 2,000 nails, arranged in varying heights to form a topographical map of the Mexican republic. Ramirez said he was eager to finish the bed in time for the Mexican presidential elections in July.
"The president that inherits this country will sleep in a bed which is not very comfortable to lie in," he said. "It will be very hard to rest."
Ramirez's "Presidential Chair" takes an even harsher look at what has been called an imperial presidency. The massive chair, also of mahogany, is carved in a similar baroque style. But instead of a bench, there is a toilet seat--that chair is the place where so many Mexican presidents have sat and soiled the country, he said. On the floor, Ramirez has tossed hundreds of worthless coins, a fool's-gold metaphor for the Mexican peso, useless after so many devaluations.
Alongside the chair, Ramirez has placed a chest called "Moctezuma's Treasure Chest." It is simply carved, made of Chechan wood found in the state of Chiapas. The simplicity makes it look like a packing crate. It is empty inside.
"The real treasure is the wood that it's made from," said Ramirez. "The real treasures are Mexico's natural resources."
Ramirez also takes on the Catholic Church with his 13-foot-tall iron cross. On the bottom of the cross, inside the thick wire, he has carved out Indian-like faces as if they were pushing to get out of a cage. They are imprisoned by the cross.
The exhibit includes a multimedia display that Ramirez made as a tribute to his mother, a poet who died in 1994. In another room he has hung wooden carved letters coated in gold leaf to spell out the following phrase: Oro por espejos.
En los ojos del Mexico, Que aun no aprende a mirarse a si mismo.
On the opposite wall, Ramirez has hung dozens of mirrors, which reflect the gold letters, along with a printed translation: "Gold for mirrors. In the eyes of Mexico, that has yet to learn how to see itself."
Ramirez hopes his work will inspire curiosity and introspection among Mexicans, but also among those who are not familiar with the country and its problems. Parts of the exhibition will be included in a larger show at the Museo de la Ciudad in Mexico City, beginning in August.
"It's time for us to look at ourselves in the mirror," said Ramirez. "We need to figure out what we are good at and then move forward."
* "Oro por Espejos" continues through June 24 at the Iturralde Gallery, 116 N. La Brea Ave. Tuesday-Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Saturday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m.; and by appointment.
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