Normally, I don't do public work,
I don't do commissions.
You know, the library is the National Library
So it was like a major project.
So they approached me, but I told them,
"If I have an idea I like, I will do it."
So when the building was ready, I had a couple of ideas,
And one of these ideas was to have this skeleton of a whale in the center.
Somehow, it was like an image, more than an idea.
But it came to me like a very clear image
Of this floating whale in the center of the bookshelves in the library.
When I am dealing with a ready-made object
Or something from reality,
I try to understand the logic of the object,
How it works.
So I took some joints in the different centers of movement in the whale,
And from those points, I start to draw circles.
They're like rings,
And those rings intersect,
So you have different points in the body.
So, from the different centers of the skeleton,
I was drawing rings expanding,
And they were touching in different ways,
Surprising ways,
Until it was really huge rings.
At the end was a lot labor to fill it with graphite.
And I like the graphite because its lead
Has certain qualities that is not like painting on the bone,
It's more like dust.
I always liked the idea of this dark mineral
Against the whiteness of the bone,
How they contrast.
If you think, in my work, as a way of taking from reality
And then extracting something, and then revealing just one central part,
Or the part that I'm interested in.
It's a kind of collage.
Getting involved with that, and remaking the structure again.
So it still is what it is originally,
But then is revealed in a different way.
I mean, I know that when you do something like this
In a big building like that one,
The symbolism and the mythology starts to play a factor,
And humanity has a lot of legendary tales and stories
And mythologies in relation to the whale.
On the other hand, normally in a building like this,
You will do an eagle or something symbolic about Mexico or something like that,
That they love to do in the old times, you know?
But I think now, being more about knowledge,
and also the building has an ecological side.
But I think that all that is in the work
Without me saying anything.
I think for me, what is important is the translation
From real experience.
But then how you translate that experience into a sign,
into a language, into art,
That you can communicate your discoveries to other people.