Collage Project
Mexico City Course
Collage Project. Mexico City Course
The Mexico City course (CLC 2129B/ SP 2102B/ VA 3390G) was offered in the Winter 2019 by Professor Alena Robin. The course examines Mexico City through its history of continuous transformations from the Aztec empire to the megalopolis it is today. It identifies traces of the various pasts in the city’s contemporary urban landscape and daily life through art, film and literature. We also address current issues such as water distribution and shortage, garbage collection, public transportation, and tragedies, for example the different earthquakes the city suffered, the students 1968 protest, crime and drug trafficking.
The final assignment for the course was a creative one. Students had to do a collage, an image composed by gluing papers and various other objects to a ground, with the intention of transforming the most commonplace materials into an imaginative artwork. It was their opportunity to make their own image of Mexico City using a pasting technique of different objects. Some questions guiding their creation were: What image of Mexico City was the most powerful to you? What would you like others to know about Mexico City? The people? The countryside? The food? The art? The conflict? The traditions? What is more meaningful to you: the past, the present or the future of Mexico City?
Students had to consider design, color, texture, and composition, but they had unlimited freedom to express their view of the city. Here are some examples.
What You Choose to See
Nayla Janelle Hamid
Photograph collage on canvas
Untitled
By Victor Martínez-Rodríguez.
Felt, wool string and wood.
Tenochtitlan over present-day Mexico City
Tyler Peters
Wool string, leather, rocks, on paper.
La Ciudad de Museos
Hanna Camille Barnett
Collage - Photos taken in Mexico City during the summer of 2018 (iPhone Camera)
The background layer is composed of famous sights in Mexico City: buildings, patterns, and places. With an added layer of dimension, the foreground of the collage consists of paintings that are found within the 150+ museums in the city. My intent with this project was to combine the art that is found within the museums with the art that is found outside of them.
tráficolandia
Elizabeth Dorfman
Mixed medium
Tráficolanida depicts the chaos within mexico city. Underground trafficking of: drugs, garbage and political messages is integrated with mexico city's beauty and it's incomparable historical sites. The piece centers around a tank shooting through the virgin of guadalupe which acts as a symbol of both the 1968 massacre and a representation of the problems in mexico city that are degrading its religious significance. The style of the piece was inspired by surrealism with juxtaposed images used to convey an unconventional and chaotic yet holistic image of mexico city.
Hay vida
Lora Yurdakul
Cut-and-pasted printed paper on canvas
The idea behind my creation was to focus on the strength of Mexico City amidst all the hardships experienced. The cut-and-pasted images include sombre images of the Tlatelolco massacre (1968), the 1985 Mexico City earthquake and the 43 missing Ayotzinapa students (2014). I wanted to highlight how despite all the hardships experienced by this city, there remains a strong and very much alive community today. This concept is represented by the hand-drawn anatomical heart placed in the middle of the collage, with the phrase “Hay vida” (meaning “There is life” in Spanish) written in the centre. I included this sentence because it represents how the heartbeat of Mexico City’s community is strong and how the community has flourished despite its tragic past.
Tres figuras
Seth Michael Anderson
Mixed media
Untitled
Meagan Wong
Mixed media
Sinking City
William Doney
Cardboard, newspaper and magazine clippings.
Images culturally important to Mexico City are depicted sinking into the ancient map of Tenochtitlan, while the mountains Iztaccíhuatl and Popocatépetl are still in the background. As Mexico City sinks into the soil, it’s modern construction and culturally important buildings are at risk of the same outcome as the images depicted in this collage.
Feeding Mexico City
Whitney Alexandra Freise
Mixed medium