Writing

 
The Multidimensional and the Multiple in Contemporary Art
Let's Sow Dreams, Let's Harvest Hope^[1] (2015-2018) by Lapiztola Stencil

Currently, it is common for artists to implement aesthetic strategies that expand the scope of the discourse of their artistic work. Some resources used for this purpose are the multiplication and fragmentation of the image, that represent a constant process of reconfiguration and resignification. The work Let's Sow Dreams, Let's Harvest Hope (2015-2018) by the Mexican collective Lapiztola Stencil, formed by Rosario Martínez, Roberto Vega and Yankel Balderas, is a piece that was initially a stenciled mural; however, between 2015 and 2018 it has been transposed into multiple formats: murals with variations, digital animation, images that circulate on social networks, and commercial objects. This reproduction in different spaces and dimensions has modified the work’s meaning, and even led to alternative readings of the first version of the piece. In this essay, I propose to analyze the implications of the multiplication and fragmentation of the image that circulates in public spaces.

            To begin with, it is necessary to ask: What are the limits of reproducibility of the image without significantly modifying its aesthetics and meaning? I have chosen to call these manifestations multidimensional images, that is, images that undergo transformations from the formats in which they were originally conceived and, as a result, transformations in  their meaning.

            Let's Sow Dreams, Let's Harvest Hope (Fig. 1) was first created in 2015 on the exterior wall of the Museum of Popular Arts Belber Jiménez in Oaxaca, Mexico. The mural presents a figurative portrait in black and white of a girl. Her gaze is directed to a point just over the horizon. She is seated on orange, pink and light blue flowers. She holds a red heart in her hands from which three red flowers sprout. The piece also includes a fragment from a speech given by the Oaxacan activist Beatriz Cariño Trujillo, who murdered in 2010:

Brothers, sisters, let us open our hearts like a flower waiting for the first ray of sunlight in the morning. Let us sow dreams and harvest hopes, remembering that we can only build from the bottom up, from the left, and from the heart.^[2]

1.       Lapiztola Stencil, Let's Sow Dreams, Let's Harvest Hope, 2015, mural made with stencil and direct painting, detail, exterior wall of the Belber Jiménez Museum, Centro, Oaxaca (photography by Lapiztola Stencil).

The  image in the piece was also reproduced on screen-printed objects on the collective’s website, as a mural in the Coachella Walls Urban Art Festival in California (2016), as  a mural in the Institute of Graphic Arts in Oaxaca (2017), as a mural in Hanger Street, Orlando (2017) and as a digital animation (2018). In this latter format it was circulated through the  social networks of the artists as electoral propaganda to collect signatures for the independent candidacy for the Mexican presidency of María de Jesus Patricio Martinez, better known as “Marichuy”. In this way, the intentionality of the work was constantly transformed, making evident the complexity of reproducible political art that circulates in the collective imaginary and the public domain.

In analyzing the strategies that come into play in the multidimensionality and multiplicity of Let's Sow Dreams, Let's Harvest Hope, it is pertinent to distinguish between the walls where the interventions were made, the social networks as a scenario for the distribution of animation, and the reproductions made on commercial objects.

Interventions on walls

In the first intervention in Oaxaca, Bety Cariño’s phrase was a key element, since the text is closely related to the symbols in the work. The heart can be interpreted as a rebirth of tomorrow, inviting everyone to build it through solidarity, from the “bottom” to the “left”, words related to social sectors committed to struggle and resistance, and “from the heart”, on the basis of empathy for one another. The intense blue contrasts with the black and white image, establishing a bond of local identity since among the Oaxacan indigenous groups this tonality is frequently used in textiles and handicrafts. In addition, in western Christian culture, this color in its various tonalities has been used to represent the Virgin’s mantle, relating it to divinity and purity. Similarly, portraits of children remit to innocence and purity (Fig. 2).

 2 Lapiztola Stencil, Let's Sow Dreams, Let's Harvest Hope, 2015, wall intervention, detail, Historical Center, Oaxaca, (photograph by Lapiztola Stencil).

                The mural was erased by the municipality, and the wall was painted blue again. Following this, there were anonymous reactions by members of the community that expanded the aesthetic meaning of that wall space. A few days after the mural’s elimination, the phrase “I MISS YOU” appeared on the wall, together with a painting of two white crying eyes, a color print on letter-size paper of the original mural, and a couple of candles on the floor (Fig. 3).

 3 Paintings that emerged after the elimination of the mural, 2015, (photograph by Lapiztola Stencil).

To date there are no records of how long these interventions lasted, but it is evident that the initial image was so significant for some viewers that, faced with its erasure, they decided to transform the space into a site of remembrance of the image. Together, the wall paintings, the photograph of the mural and the candles are similar to a Mexican altar.

These social phenomena opened up other possibilities of reproduction of the print in public spaces, and questions arose like: What are its limits and what is the effect of its temporary exposure? What determines the reactions of its spectators, particularly in this case when there no specific mediation strategies are deployed between the artists and the audience? The realization that the presentation of an image can have consequences introduces us to its political dimension. Mouffe proposes that any art work or artistic practice possesses this dimension inasmuch as it “plays a role in the constitution and maintenance, or the critique, of an existing symbolic order.”^[3]

The reproduction titled American Woman (Fig. 4), was created in 2016 in the context of the Coachella Walls Urban Art Festival in California and used the same stencil matrix as Let's Sow Dreams, Let's Harvest Hope. The portrait of the girl was presented as a mirror-image, that is, there were two portraits that were produced by the same template using it forwards and backwards. For this reason, in the mural, one image of the girl was turning to the right and the other to the left. They were on a red background, and in each lower corner, there were two pink flowers and a green one. Cariño’s phrase was not included and instead the fabric of the dress was extended. The red color was essential to the composition, not only because it contrasted with the black figures, but because it was associated with blood, war, passion, and strength. It was not coincidental that the artists chose to highlight this color for the repetition of the piece in the United States, where there have been many cases of abuse of migrant communities. Both the title and the components of the image invite its reading as a revindication of the indigenous communities and the new generations that live there.

In the location where the work was exhibited, it was logical for the public to relate the image to Chicano and Mexican culture through the iconographic elements of the heart and the indigenous dress of the person portrayed. It was a highly narrative mural that appealed to popular imaginaries and affects, generating sensorial experiences in some of its visitors. Maria Venegas and Cristina Venegas, daughters of Mexican immigrants who have undocumented relatives in the United States, referred to the work as "a painting that, through its colors and clothing, reminds us of village festivities. It is important to show these types of things so that the “güeros”^[4] can know our culture." ^[5] The relationship that some viewers established between the visual characteristics of the work, memory and references to Mexican culture can be related to the search for identity in children of migrants. 

4. Lapiztola Stencil, American Woman, 2016, intervention on wall with stencil and direct paint, Coachella, California, (photograph by Lapiztola Stencil).

Another reproduction took place at the Institute of Graphic Arts in Oaxaca (IAGO) (2016) (Fig. 5). It was placed in the courtyard as part of the retrospective exhibit Corte Aquí (Cut Here), which celebrated ten years of artistic production by the collective. A spectator who stood in front of the wall could perceive the complete vertical image that required the viewer to gaze upward in order to obtain appreciate it fully.

Roland Barthes, in his reflections on walls and advertising, highlighted the relationship of the body with the image observed, pointing out that:

A standing image is measured in relation to my own height, and is perceived through movement rather than through vision. The figures it represents have a superhuman dimension. The verticality gives them a kind of ambiguous, benevolent and threatening tone. The wall is both an obstacle and a support, a screen that both hides and receives, a space where we stop and project ourselves. ^[6]

The viewers had close interactions with the piece, which they could even touch. They posed for photographs in front of it, positioning themselves in relation to the painted figures. The space invited this type of interaction since the IAGO patio has tables and chairs available for visitors. Some of the users shared their photos on social networks along with their opinion of the mural.

5. Visitor in the IAGO posing with the mural, 2017, (photograph from Instagram).

Another reproduction of Let's Sow Dreams, Let's Harvest Hope was created at Hanger Street, Orlando in 2017. The stencil included an intervention by the Chicana artist Liseth Amaya, originally from Los Angeles, California. Her production has focused on oil painting, watercolor, and ink drawings, and her principal themes are representations of women and Mexican communities. The collaborative mural was on a white background on which a large red circle was drawn, over which the black and white portrait of the girl holding the heart was set. A chain of blue and red flowers with leaves in black and white line drawing that followed the shape of the circle was made by Liseth (Fig.6).

6. Lapiztola Stencil y Liseth Amaya, Let's Sow Dreams, Let's Harvest Hope, 2017, intervention on wall with stencil and direct paint, Orlando, Florida, (photograph from Instagram).

Presenting this piece in some cities in the U.S. implied some challenges since there is a certain visual emphasis in the country on a Chicano mural aesthetic that appropriates Mexican icons and symbols to create a new language. Lapiztola Stencil and Liseth Amaya employed symbols related to Oaxacan communities, but they reconfigured them to represent the whole community through their subject matter; elements like the heart or the flowers weren’t put aside, but integrated into the new narrative and visual composition.

            Reviewing the different reproductions of Let's Sow Dreams, Let's Harvest Hope, it is evident that the portrait was the central element of the piece, using  gender and realism to facilitate the spectator’s identification with the other, as the representation of the subject, particularly her face and its expression, reflects the spirit of the person. In addition, the dimensions of the composition were a key factor, since the template of the figure measured just over two meters in height.

The later reproductions show significant changes in the use of color, transforming the perception and symbolism of the portrait. When it was presented on a white background, it became integrated with the contiguous walls. It took on a dramatic tone when the background was blue or red, since these primary colors have a symbolic weight of their own.

Another differentiating aspect was the inclusion or omission of Cariño’s text. It was present only in the pieces created in Oaxaca, where it had particular relevance because the work was designed for a local audience. In the murals in the US, the space originally allotted to the text was used to extend the girl’s dress. If one observes it in detail, when the text is absent, this part of the image seems somewhat empty, suggesting that the composition was designed to include it. The advantage of working with a matrix and reproducible media lies in the possibility of modifying the image in accordance with varied aesthetic needs.

Animated prints: from the wall to likes

On January 2, 2018, with the launching of an animated version of the mural Let's Sow Dreams, Let's Harvest Hope, the paradigm of reproducibility of the print was transformed. Digital experimentation allowed the distribution of the image in another dimension of the public sphere: social networks.

 On collective’s official Facebook account that had 16,161 followers, they published the hashtags “#porlavisibilidaddelospueblosindigenas^[7] #votapormarichuy^[8] Marichuy is a Nahuatl woman from Jalisco who wants your signature to become the first indigenous independent candidate (spokesperson) for the Mexican presidency in the 2018 elections”^[9]; and on their Instagram, with 18,400 followers, they published: “The time for the people’s emergence has come #marichuy #signforthevisibilityofindigenouspeoples #ourfightisforlifeletssowdreamsandharvesthope.”^[10]

Along with the hashtags, a 44-second animation^[11] was included, which used the image of the first mural with a blue background as a reference. The framing was of the girl’s face and hands with an animation of the movement of the flowers as they emerge from the heart. Surely, the artists used this version of the mural because it grew in popularity in Oaxaca after it was deleted, and they received many expressions of support from their followers. From an artistic  point of view, the color blue is common in the popular art of Oaxaca, which may have been another reason to animate this version of the mural.

In the animation, the girl sings Huecanías (I’m Going Far),^[12] a love song in the Nahuatl language, originally from Xoxocotla in the state of Morelos, México. The piece is interpreted by a twelve-year-old girl, and the lyrics and translation are the following:

At the end of the song, the screen goes black and animated letters read: “FIRMA X CHUY”^[14].

Unlike the reproductions on walls, the animated version of this piece was designed specifically as a political advertisement, inviting the followers on social media to sign in support of the independent candidacy of Maria de Jesus Patricio, spokesperson of the Indigenous Government Council, as a  candidate for the Mexican presidency.

As of March 2018, there were 895 reproductions of the animation on Facebook and 3,745 on Instagram. In this way, the work entered a complex process of reproduction that moved from the murals and their digitalization and animation to the direct reproduction of the animation by users who shared the publication, taking the image far beyond the era of technical reproduction that Walter Benjamin studied.

Today, Benjamin’s idea that technical reproducibility modifies the relationship between the masses and art has expanded and become more complex. Now that the image has entered the digital era, its circulation is uncontrolled, and it can be reproduced by anyone with an immediate effect, its meaning is constantly being reconfigured. The work may lose its original intention and be subordinated to the objectives of the Internet user who appropriates images and assigns new meanings to them. Images can be viewed, shared and edited wherever there is access to the Internet. Moreover, a new interaction with art emerges when users portray themselves with the images, sharing their opinions and sensory experiences, and on occasion debating them with others on their social networks.

With these reproductions, the democratization of political art takes on a new character. Multiple forms of reproduction are intertwined, including those of public space, the studio, galleries, museums, and the reproduction done by users through digital media, thus opening up new frontiers for the study of the phenomenon of reproducibility from traditional media to technological means.

Objects produced with impressions of the work Let’s Sow Dreams, Let’s Harvest Hope

The image of Let’s Sow Dreams, Let’s Harvest Hope also circulated on bags and silkscreened T´-shirts (Fig.7), which were sold through social media, small businesses in Oaxaca, and a distributor of Mexican products in Barcelona. The silkscreened images corresponded to the first stenciled mural that included Beatriz Cariño’s phrase, with variations in background color depending on the bag or shirt.

7. Lapiztola Stencil, Let’s Sow Dreams, Let’s Harvest Hope, 2017, silkscreened bags, (photograph by Lapiztola Stencil).

            The hashtags of the reproductions of Let’s Sow Dreams, Let’s Harvest Hope generate relationships on the web between images linked to the piece that allow us to see a sequence that moves from the mural from Orlando, someone posing with a T-shirt, the animation in support of Marichuy, the image of “I MISS YOU” after the censorship of the piece, and the mural in Coachella to the collective in the process of creation. This installation configured by social network accounts reveals the ways in which the images penetrate  public space and are resignified.

Conclusions

In reviewing the reproductions of Let’s Sow Dreams, Let’s Harvest Hope, we can conclude that, when they were exhibited on walls, the permanence and participation of the viewers were subject to the social and cultural context of their exhibition. The question that emerges is then: what were the aesthetic strategies that allowed for the transformation of that original situation? I imagine that the artists did not foresee the phenomenon that would arise on the basis of the initial mural in Oaxaca. The artists produced an initial transformation of public space, and when the mural was eliminated, their public decided to intervene. In other reproductions, the audience interacted with the pieces, documented them and disseminated the images on their social networks. In this way, the murals entered the digital sphere, expanding the dimensions of the work.

Another variation that can be observed is that the piece went from being an artistic object to a vehicle of political and commercial propaganda, a process which led to its adaptation. To a certain extent, the animation in support of Marichuy was compatible with the declaration of the artists in favor of the visibilization of indigenous communities. With respect to the commercial uses of the image, the question arises as to whether political art has the same effect when it can be bought and sold. In this case, some of the people who purchased the bags and shirts didn’t refer directly to the meaning of the mural in their social networks, but by adding the hashtag #sembremossueñoscosechemosesperanzas (Let’s Sow Dreams, Let’s Harvest Hope) one could browse the Web, see images from other reproductions and relate their meaning.

Reproduction in public spaces shows that reproducible art has no limits. The work can have different readings in accordance with its material or discursive changes, distinct social contexts, and the reappropriations performed by its audience, and in this way,  a new democratization of multiple images is generated.

Bibliography

Barthes, Roland 2002. La Torre Eiffel. Textos sobre la imagen. Buenos Aires: Paidós.

Mouffe, Chantal. 2014. Agonística, pensar el mundo políticamente. Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica.

______________. 2007. Prácticas artísticas y democracia agonística. Barcelona: Museu d'Art Contemporani, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.