Minerva Cuevas in "Mexico City" - Season 8 | Art21

[crowds chanting]

[strumming music]

[crowds chanting]

[distant sirens]

[Minerva Cuevas] I feel my work is very
rooted to Mexico,

to my background,

the sense of community and social justice.

We are in a general crisis.

The disappearance of the 43 students 
of the Ayotzinapa school is, I think,

one of the most well-known situations and 
political crises in Mexico at the moment.

I started working with 
"Disidencia" project in 2007.

I was going to film, and very 
much trace a cartography of

resistance and dissidence in Mexico City.

Mexico City, for me, it's so rich.

[violin music]

I think the city's inspiring 
because it's full of improvisation.

Mexico City, it's very mixed in terms of class, of race.

It's very much built by the indigenous,

the people that came from all 
the other states in Mexico.

♪ ♪

And I think the other element 
that is present together

with this rural element is the sense of community.

♪ ♪

I was born

in Mexico City, here, but 
my family comes from Oaxaca.

So if I have to say that my roots are somewhere 
in the country, it would be the south.

I studied visual arts, but I quit school.

It was around the early Nineties.

And the art scene became quite interesting
because anything was possible.

It was not evident at the 
beginning of my production

that it was going to take a political direction,

but suddenly, it just became obvious.

— From here, we can see the Latin-American Tower.

That's where I used to have the 
office space on the 14th floor.

It used to be in every postcard of Mexico City.

Now that's changing, but, yeah,

it's still a very symbolic building.

[Minerva Cuevas] The Better Life Corporation started around '98.

It's probably my most important work.

[typewriter clicking]

At the beginning, it was not 
planned as an art project.

Just these symbolic actions, 
some giving away little gifts.

It could be a subway ticket.

It could be a barcode sticker for the supermarket,
student I.D. card.

It created this sense of freedom 
that actions are possible.

So I think you empower people...

This little disturbance in the system, no?

It's finding the gap in the bureaucratic process.

With the barcodes intervention, 
I could alter just the lines,

and people were buying cheaper food--of course,

it's micro sabotage--

and then little by little, it 
became an art project, as well.

It gets exhibited in cultural spaces,

and that's very important because it became 
the second stage of this street intervention.

In any conceptual art, the main 
thing is to generate the idea,

and in my case, it's the social idea.

[flute music]

— You should mark them with a pencil.

Like this one that's rounded, or this right now.

— Ok.

— No mas.

[Minerva Cuevas] In this visual society, it seems 
that we are at the same time blinded.

All the things that we face every day 
that are signs of the social crisis,

sometimes they get transparent and 
forgotten, so some of my projects,

the exercise is very much reworking the 
visual code to make things visible again.

One of the first ones was 
the "Del Montte" campaign.

I decided to alter the brand and generate 
a campaign about the actual situation of

how the company is influencing politics or 
land struggles in countries like Guatemala.

— Careful with the paintbrush up on the ladder.

[chuckles]

In my case, as everything is 
generated as conceptual art,

it's secondary if it's made by 
me or if it's painted by me,

but usually, I let those things 
to the professional sign painters.

For me, it's a strategy that connects to 
billboards or other kind of advertising

the branding of companies.

You are already familiar with the image,

and then you get this other connotation 
connected to that image,

so it's playful.

[traffic sounds]

— Si.

I got interested in primitive currency.

And cacao was used as currency 
in pre-Hispanic times in Mexico.

— The most political cacao is

the Soconusco cacao, the one we used to produce 500 ears for the show.

— It was the first chocolate to cross the
Atlantic in human history.

And the Catholic monarchs tried it for the first time

— 1521, no?

— Exactly.

[Minerva Cuevas] For me, the exhibition "Feast and Famine" was 
very much a reference to the capitalist system,

considering the whole capitalist 
system as a cannibalist process

— It looks like blood, no?

— Si.

because I think that puts together two 
of the characteristics of capitalism--

the exploitation of all the 
resources in the planet--

so it's all this feast; but at the end,

we are reaching the point of societies 
that are dying of starvation.

For me, the most important 
art work in the whole show,

it's the chocolate dripping 
from the ceiling of the gallery.

[Dripping]

Every time the

chocolate drips, one person dies of starvation 
in the world,

and that's every 3.6 seconds.

It's a terrible fact, but somehow it's 
translated into this chocolate sculpture.

[Dripping continues]

[Dripping continues]

Since pre-Hispanic times,

the neighborhood of 
Tepito was a place for a market,

and that's why they are somehow occupying 
the streets to have their businesses.

I like when there are these spaces of 
freedom on the streets in Mexico City.

The area itself has been very 
united and almost autonomous.

It's an alternative way of commerce and a 
very interesting way to resist and survive.

[bell ringing]

The slogan part of the poster, "Against the 
Forbidden: The Streets of the Possible,"

refers to the neighborhood Tepito and the bigger 
movement that really wants to take the streets as

a public place to demonstrate 
or to act politically.

And some part of that kind of street culture 
or community life is getting forgotten.

[violin music]

Art is totally connected to social change.

♪ ♪

We don't have a way to measure 
how art can impact society,

and that's good because that's 
part of the freedom to do.

[soft electronic music]