In the project Who will measure the space, who will tell me the time?, Deball Castillo investigates the relationship Atzompa potters have with their archaeological heritage and how it is expressed, contaminated or dissolved in the present. Far from taking a purist stance, this work began with a series of discussions on the copies, forgeries, style changes and influences in the history of Mexican archeology.
Together with Kythzia Barrera from Innovando la tradición and the family Martínez Alarzón from Atzompa, we visited the archaeological museum Rufino Tamayo and selected our favorite pieces. To this set of pieces, we added a lot of nuts and gears found in Ramiro´s workshop, also a whipping top, a ball, and other belongings, to form a repertoire, a vocabulary to tell our stories.
OACAXA––Mariana Castillo Deball’s exhibition at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca, titled Who Will Measure the Space, Who Will Tell the Time?, (Oaxaca, Mexico, January 24 – April 20, 2015) was another extraordinary installation from one of Mexico’s leading and most widely-exhibited contemporary artists. This year she had an acclaimed show in Berlin (Mariana Castillo Deball: Parergon) at the Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart Bruns) that projected the history of this City.
