Since March 4, plasma of faceless beings, representing migratory displacements, is taking a grand tour around several communities in Oaxaca. It’s the Éxodos Sur (Southbound Exoduses) collection by Helen Escobedo (1934-2010).
The 181-piece installation –men and women in motion, wearing recycled clothes in allusion to the migratory phenomenon- has been curated by Monica Castillo and Fernando Galvez.
The traveling exhibit kicked off in the slums near the outskirts of the state capital, a region where migrations have been commonplace for years. The work is accompanied with expositions, lectures, roundtables, workshops and a documentary film of all the pieces displayed in the project and shot by Pablo Ramirez Duron. The last stop of this traveling exhibition is slated for the Museum of Memory and Tolerance in Mexico City, the final home to some of the pieces making up the Southbound Exoduses series.
Sculptor Helen Escobedo studied Philosophy and Letters at the UNAM, but her artistic gift led her to taking sculpture lessons. She got a scholarship in 1951 to study at the Royal College of Art in London. Back in Mexico in 1956, she presented her first individual exhibit at the Mexican Art Gallery. Her big leap happened in 1966 as she left bronze behind altogether –her material of choice for many years. She was one of the first Mexican artists who tried her hand at what is now known as installations and performances.
In addition to her creative career, in 1961 she acted as director of Fine Arts at the Collegiate Museum of Sciences and Art (MUCA) at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), and right after that she was tapped director of UNAM’s museums and galleries in 1974. She joined the International Council of Modern Art Museums, became a lifetime associated member of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Letters and Art in Belgium and of the Executive Council of the International Sculpture Conference.
She served a stint as technical director of the MUNAL and directed for two years the Museum of Modern Art (MAM). She was also a member of the National Artistic Creator System at FONCA and won the 2009 National Prize of Fine Arts.
On Helen Escobedo, curator and researcher Graciela Schmilchuk wrote: “Helen Escobedo was one of the first artists in Mexico to address the destruction of the arts’ environment and to use wasted natural materials in her artworks. And she also pioneered the practice of an anti-solemn conceptualism through fleeting installations designed for specific spots. However, the making of sculptures for public places kept Escobedo on the ambivalence side as she came up with humor-laden visual reflections on her country’s monuments and graphic speculations increasingly focused on the absurdity of imposing permanent works. This led her to a much larger dematerialization of the arts for the sake of a far more conceptual approach.”
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