English Language – Página 3 – Mexican Cultural Centre, United Kingdom

Liliana Pedroza Castillo

Given that diplomatic relations between countries are often introduced as though it was a feast of distinctive arts and unique culture, it is necessary to rethink how to establish these links of communication between different cultures.

Nottingham Castle, United Kingdom. Photograph: Eduardo Estala Rojas.

I discern from my own experience in cultural exchange within and without Mexico in the alternative spaces of cultural negotiation: it is paramount and necessary to show the artistic discourse surrounding the fringes of cultural marketing, i.e. that discourse that hardly comes out to be appreciated by the broader public and nonetheless spans in a network of connecting little places and small doses. Galleries, libraries, pubs, theatres, parks, any place can be a venue to gather artists of different fields and create a suitable atmosphere for the interactions across creators and spectators: they generate spaces for the encounter with the public deliberately summoned to share an entire afternoon or a key moment of the day’s routine. They generate a new audience. They provoke the crossover of art with daily life blurring its borders. They allow to play with the spaces, the artists, the spectators assorted in all possible manners. They elicit awe.

The cultural attaché is also a mediator between the artist and the public. However, she ought not to be seen just as an intermediate point, mean, conduct, but as a curator of a complex cultural interdisciplinary discourse. The cultural attaché is an aerialist that must tense the rope that will be her way between tradition and breakthrough art, this happening in a cultural dynamic of constant renovation—those static paradigms present in the foreign imagination and societies of a nation against the vital flux that transforms and rejuvenates the same paradigms. The cultural attaché is mediator between the own and the foreign gaze.

While cultural activism diversifies and is transformed through the numerous artistic inputs, the development of cultural diplomacy is tempted to fall in the stagnation of bureaucracy, of a limited range of defined action, of repetition. The development, rather, aims to cross roads and sum up efforts. The development is about the junction of one and another’s work so culture breathes beyond in other spaces and propagates to other spectators. It is, thus, necessary to take over the streets so culture and art can habituate the daily life beyond aseptic and isolated places. The development should generate a meeting point of cultures not only to underline difference but to observe similarities. In this shared territory, cultural diplomacy places in equality both the official cultural discourse and the emergent one. Behold the challenge.

Translated from Spanish by Dr. Paniel Reyes-Cárdenas.

Liliana Pedroza Castillo is a Mexican writer and narrator. She majored in Spanish Literature in the Autonomous University of Chihuahua, Mexico. She was award a doctorate in Hispanic American Literature by the Complutense University of Madrid, Spain. Liliana was awarded the National Prize of Young Stories “Julio Torri” in Mexico, 2009. She won the Chihuahua Contest of Literature in Mexico, 2008, in the category of tales. She has been included in different editions and published in national and foreign cultural journals. Some of her stories have been translated into French and Greek languages. She is author of “Andamos huyendo, Elena” (Tierra Adentro publications, Mexico, 2007); “Vida en otra parte” (Ficticia Editorial, Mexico, 2009) and “Aquello que nos resta” (Tierra Adentro publications, Mexico, 2009). We suggest to visit http://www.lilianapedroza.com

Susannah Rigg

I have a thing about doors in Mexico and I have a special passion for rundown doors with little holes that I can peek through to see the building inside. To me there is nothing more beautiful, mystical and magical than seeing nature retaking its space behind a deserted doorway. Being read books like The Enchanted Forest and The Secret Garden when I was a young girl undoubtedly inspired this love and mystical intrigue.

Susannah Rigg. Photo: Mexico Retold.

To me there is always a childlike delight in discovering the secrets behind doors; that wild essence of nature regaining its rightful place. This love is so strong that I could probably offer tours of the deserted houses and best peepholes of Oaxaca. So imagine my surprise and delight when taking my sister to see my favourite peephole that the door I intended to peep through was open and an art installation had taken over the space! Someone else had seen the beauty I saw in this elegantly, crumbling building and they had opened it up to the world.

The first thing that struck me when I walked inside was the orange tree thriving in the central courtyard. Oranges had fallen all around and an old man was sitting there as if guarding the tree. Needless to say, countless stories about this man and his relation to the decomposing house started to form in my head. The smell of oranges infiltrated my senses and I smiled to think that this tree knew all of the secrets of this building. The art installation was diverse and intriguing, and at points I was uncertain as to whether what I was seeing was art or in fact things left behind when the house was abandoned. And that mystery was beautiful, that uncertainty overjoyed me, because it left space for the fantasy, for the creation of my own story.

Some parts of the building still showed signs of the house as it was. The odd sink or window was still in place. The artists had worked with these features to juxtapose the old and the new. Piles and piles of wood were stacked in one room of the building. Could it be art or was it simply part of the house?

Chair and sky. Photo: Mexico Retold.

A theme that ran through the art was “Day of the Dead”. There was an altar and metal bedframes covered in the Cempazuchitl flower, traditionally used to decorate graves and altars during that time. My mind wondered imagining that the bedframes were found inside the deserted house and therefore to cover them in these flowers so they looked like graves signified an offering to the ancestors of the house, whose beds they would once have been and whose history lived on in secrets buried in the walls. The themes of life and death so intricately interwoven during the Day of the Dead played out hauntingly in this building, that signified both of these things at once.

The installation also allowed for interaction, asking the viewer to become part of the art, part of the building. Inspired by the story of Elpis and Pandora we were asked to visualize a miracle, write it on a piece of paper and pin it under a metal Oaxacan heart and onto the wall. I stood for a while, visualizing a peaceful Mexico, a Mexico without the “drugs war”, wrote down my wish and hammered the heart onto the wall and breathed deeply imagining the possibility.

If I am honest, I loved the art behind my beloved door, but for me the most beautiful aspect was the run down walls with bricks appearing beneath the stucco, the original arches standing proud, moss and plants retaking their natural place juxtaposed against metal building poles now exposed as the bricks have fallen away. And all this was highlighted by the bluest of blue skies that took the place of the ceiling and was another sign of nature taking back its rightful role!

Susannah Rigg was born and raised in London, England. Before she had even set foot on Mexican soil, she was deeply in love with the country. Learning about the Aztecs at age 10, she decided that she needed to visit their homeland and it felt like her home as soon as she arrived many years later. Susannah lives in Oaxaca and is the founder of Mexico Retold, a site focused on telling a different and positive story about Mexico. Besides her freelance writing, for publications including, Metro UK, The Mexican Londoner, The Matador Network and Truffle Pig and other pro bono projects like Volunteer Oaxaca, Susannah is currently writing her first novel.