El ágora del pasado / The Agora of the Past continues Lagomarsinos research on the colonial history of Latin America and by inverting and reconstituting markers of imperial influence and control, the artist points to the volatile relationship between power and geography.
In the new commissioned work for the Femsa Biennal in Zacatecas, 2018, the artist joint two materials that have a very strong presence in the region: clay and silver.
During the Spanish colonisation Zacatecas was together with Potosi the worlds biggest exporter of silver to the “old world”, you can say that it became one of the centres of the development of the westerns capitalism. This conquest continues today, now instead with multinational corporations. Traces of the mining are very present; the destruction of the land, the pollution of water and the many diseases that the population have suffer and continues to suffer from the mining. The clay is taken from the same ruptured land and has long before the Spaniards arrived been part of the culture and history of the region.
In this work the artist used a model of a conquistador helmet from the museum in Guadalupe where the installation was later displayed in, and in collaboration with a ceramic studio produced the 21 helmets in raw clay covering the interior of the helmets with silver leaves. Giving theme a certain luminosity, as they are presented in lines on the floor. Creating a feeling of objects of instability.
Lagomarsino appropriates an object that has a strong symbolic meaning and gives visibility to our relationship to the past with strong resonances in the present, between the exercise of violence, power and contemporary life.
