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 of 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 with 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.