Ink, Arcana and Angels: Tracing the Fate of Confinement
The exhibition “Ink, Arcana and Angels: Tracing the fate of confinement” was inaugurated last Thursday at the Museo Nacional de Culturas Populares.
The Ministry of Culture of the Government of Mexico, through the Cultura Comunitaria program and the Gráfica Canera collective, inaugurated last Thursday at the National Museum of Popular Cultures the exhibition “Ink, Arcana and Angels: Tracing the fate of confinement,” made up of 44 engravings made by 16 women, 17 men and four young artists deprived of liberty in San José El Alto, Querétaro.
Gráfica Canera is a collective from Queretaro that is part of the Community Culture program, through the Arte + Movilidad action line, which promotes training processes and community advocacy for the exercise of cultural rights of individuals and communities deprived of liberty; those in the social reintegration process; and also migrants in transit and return.
When inaugurating this exhibition, the general director of Vinculación Cultural, Esther Hernández Torres, pointed out that “a very clear instruction and conviction on behalf our federal Secretary of Culture, Alejandra Frausto Guerrero, is that culture cease to be a privilege to be a right in the face of elitist, classist, conservative expressions of cultural policies; and instead plant a program in which culture is a right for everyone, and an element that can promote individual and collective transformation.”
It is for this reason that the Community Culture program is present in those spaces that have been left out of cultural policies, “in this case, it is about people who are often not recognized or many of their rights are taken away, but one that cannot be taken from them is culture, and therefore freedom, even in the most adverse situations.”
The head of Cultural Animation and Educational Services of the National Museum of Popular Cultures, Monserrat Navarro Herrera, representing the director of the National Museum of Popular Cultures, Yessica Morales Vega, highlighted:
“In this exhibition, you will find a way to connect with yourselves. From art, from popular graphics, you will be able to observe the talent and creativity in each of the pieces. It is a world full of metaphors and symbolism on important issues because it has to do with everyone’s experience. Also, I think it can help us understand, discover and imagine how to release our emotions. Written language and graphic language make a wonderful bridge to reach our being. The exhibition gives a voice to those who seem silenced.”
Using her voice, Gloria Guerrero González, one of the artists now released, shared:
“With our creations and paintings, we have been given the benefit of being able to express our feelings and what we experience; it is a way of asking that we are given an opportunity to reintegrate into society.”
For her part, Mirabel García Espino, another of the artists whose work is exhibited, stressed that expressing herself between four walls was not easy:
“We don’t even feel the pandemic, because after nine years of being locked up it is not easy to go out into the world and settle in society and try not to get people to reject you. However, we are stronger than that and we express it in some way in our paintings (…) In the exhibition, the majority drew their good and dark side, because that’s how we all feel as a society, we feel that society placed us on a very dark side and they reject and discriminate against us.”
This exhibition is made up of two graphic series: “Fallen Angels” and “Canero Tarot.” The first is made up of 16 works, made by an equal number of artists belonging to the Centro de Reinserción Social (Cereso) CP 2 Femenil, and accounts for both life inside the prison and the dilemma between the concepts of “guilt” and “innocence,” “goodness” and “badness,” which permeate the prison experience of migrant women deprived of their liberty.
The second series, “Tarot Canero,” is made up of 22 images, created by 17 artists from Cereso CP 1 Varonil, in which they address issues related to crime prevention and the consequences of criminal acts through the reinterpretation of the cards of the major arcana of the tarot.
In addition, the exhibition has six woodcuts made by four young people who participate in the graphic workshops of the Centro de Internamiento y Ejecución de Medidas para Adolescentes (Ciema). These works show the daily life of confinement, but also the vulnerability that is experienced inside prison spaces. Its objective is to raise awareness about how art and culture generate tools for social reintegration.
Art as Transformation
In May 2021, Alejandrina Escobar of Diario de Queretaro wrote the story of Andrés Huitrón, a former inmate who offered workshops at the Women’s and Men’s Social Reintegration Centers. Through art workshops, Huitrón generated the opportunity for inmates to find in art an inspiration “that transcends bars, social stigmas, and promotes the right to culture.” Escobar describes Huitron’s work as a “transformative experience where making art gives new meaning and dignity.”
For four years, Andrés was an inmate at the Santa María Ixcotel Penitentiary Center, Oaxaca, “a place that, after forty years of operation, closed its doors in October 2020 and was the place where an unprecedented artistic community germinated,” details Escobar. In her article, Escobar states that the space became a national and Latin American benchmark for the social impact of works of which Huitrón was a pioneer and co-creator.
Escobar outlines that while in prison, Huitrón proposed himself as a workshop facilitator to give computer courses. She quotes him: “At the beginning they didn’t want to let me give the workshop because they didn’t conceive that I, as a prisoner, could help others; however, it was achieved,” explained Andrés, “who quickly distinguished himself as ‘the professor’ and managed to establish a dialogue with the rest of the inmates,” accounts Escobar.
Inside detention, he also studied sociology, which allowed him to understand many elements of his environment and the social and cultural realities of his classmates, many of whom were of indigenous origin and did not speak Spanish:
“Many languages are spoken in Oaxaca and it was a so difficult to express myself and understand things of their culture; In addition, it must be said that there are many ethnic groups and there is a great variety of world-views that determine very different uses and customs,” Andrés told Escobar.
After working in furniture assembly, drawing and meditation workshops, graphics arrived, writes Escobar. “It was the Oaxacan artist César Chávez who brought Huitrón closer to the art of engraving. The possibilities that this expression gave him, was the reason for him to quickly appropriate this technique and create from it a project of libertarian ink,” describes Escobar, which would later become the central hallmark of his life and artistic career.
“When we managed to create our first engraving workshop, it was very well received by artists from abroad, in Oaxaca, and they began to support it and that gave us motivation; although it was not going to help us get out, it gave us the opportunity to change our reality and feel free, even behind bars,” specified Andrés.
When Andrés recovered his freedom, Escobar writes that he knew he had found in art a firm vocation, a new way of living, of proposing, of creating bonding, of generating opportunity and a path towards his new life. It was already clear what was next for him, describes Escobar: “When I left I felt like a new person and my mind was set on what I was going to do and that was to help people who were in conditions like me: in a state of vulnerability, deprived of freedom,” said Andrés.
The exhibition “Ink, Arcana and Angels: Tracing the fate of confinement” can be visited from March 9 until May 7, 2023, from Tuesday to Sunday from 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. at the Museum of Popular Cultures, located at Av. Miguel Hidalgo 289, Col. Del Carmen, Coyoacán, Mexico City.
For more information, write to the email [email protected], or consult the social networks of the General Directorate of Cultural Liaison (@VinculaCultura).
Follow the social networks of the Ministry of Culture on Twitter (@cultura_mx), Facebook (/SecretariaCulturaMX) and Instagram (@culturamx).
Dr. Soledad Quartucci | Founder
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