Venice. The Mexican pavilion of La Biennale di Venezia 60, represented with the work We left, we always came backby Erick Meyenberg (1980), curated by Tania Ragasol and artistic and museographic production by Roberto Velázquez, stands as a project of international resonance.
It is a proposal that returns to art the poetic capacity to communicate complex topics such as migration, surpassing the rhetoric that had characterized previous Mexican pavilions.
The installation is made up of an integral space centered on a long rectangular table, on which tableware created by the artist himself is displayed. An impressive sound environment, lighting and huge 4 by 7 meter screens project a blurry image of a family gathered around a table in the countryside, designed to generate an enveloping atmosphere that evokes emotions and sensations related to the idea of separation and loss. that migrants experience when leaving their place of origin behind.
The conviviality of the banquet is linked to a ritual that temporarily restores the individual’s sense of belonging, being surrounded by his family. The table seems ready to welcome diners, although it is not clear if they have already eaten or are about to do so. In this environment, we imagine laughter, tears, hugs and memories emerging around her.
The plates suggest a fleeting presence that has interested other artists, such as Daniel Spoerri (1930), while the staging evokes Spanish baroque still lifes, where the luminosity of the objects dialogues with the darkness of the background.
In an interview for The Conference, Ragasol explains that this is a site-specific project, related to the theme of estrangement from curator Adriano Pedrosa’s exhibition. The project explores the aspect of the migrant as a universal condition of loss and questions the meaning of belonging.
“It tells us about the most primal aspects of the human being, such as rootlessness, love, sadness, hatred, mourning.
To highlight this condition of limbo, we have unfolded the present objects through reflections, such as the projection of shapes and colors on the shiny black floor that we have intentionally chosen, to evoke fleeting memories and sensations that stir in memory.
says Ragasol.
Prairie of Tears
There is also an empty chair with the remains of lit candles that, according to the curator, evoke the ancient Albanian ritual of lighting a candle in the Meadow of Tears, as an omen of the return of the loved one.
This pavilion is inspired by the personal history of Erick Meyenberg, either as the son of migrants or by his personal connection with an Albanian family who emigrated to Italy, which was his source of inspiration.
“It is a very special family – says the artist – that uses food, singing, dancing and Albanian poetry to communicate, as well as to re-create their land with each meal. When I saw it, I felt a nostalgia for something that I did not have in my childhood due to my Lebanese origins, because my grandparents decided to completely cut off from Lebanon, which generated a very big emotional ghost in me. They are different cultures, but there is something in the flavors, the emotion, in that affection that exists in the Lebanese, in the physical contact, that I recognized in them.
The feeling of a migrant is of being a hybrid, of no longer belonging to the country of origin
says Meyenberg.
We say goodbye at the moment when the performance which took place until April 22.
“It is performance –he adds– it is composed of three dancers who represent loss, and one of them, completely naked, symbolizes the vulnerability of his condition.”