Passersby were surprised when passing through the streets of Mérida on the corner of Colima in the Roma neighborhood of Mexico City, because in a small protected property, which contrasts with the dozens of real estate projects being carried out simultaneously, a mysterious sculpture of an Olmec head crushing a Tesla.
Although many wondered about its origin, few questioned what it wanted to convey, it is a strong symbol: the resistance of the original – of a mother culture – against some false notions of progress that modernity brought with it.
Who made the Olmec head by crushing a Tesla?
The work is a work of the plastic artist Chavis Marbleoriginally from Ápan, Hidalgo and is part of the series Neo-Ta Memewhich seeks to contrast Mexico's pre-Hispanic past with a critical decolonial lens, but which not only focuses on the process of acquisition with the Spanish invasion, but also on new forms of coloniality.
For this reason, Chavis Mármol addresses with his work the Olmec head crushing a Tesla as a metaphor for the mother culture related to the contemporary economic powers in which Elon Musk is the protagonist. The image is powerful, the weight of the old worldviews that still survives in the worldview of Mexicans is overwhelming.
Chavis Mármol is a plastic and visual artist graduated from the Autonomous University of the State of Hidalgo and with a master's degree from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He has numerous awards and international exhibitions.
To carry out the work at Colima 71, a hotel and gallery in the Roma neighborhood, the use of a crane was required to drop the Olmec head onto the Tesla. The process was faithfully documented in a video that Chavis shared on his Instagram account. Regarding his work he mentioned:
“This is the last in a series of sculptures in which I return to the Olmec heads to talk about specific topics. This piece is composed of two elements: on one hand we have a replica of an Olmec head, carved in quarry, weighing approximately nine tons; and a Tesla Model 3, which was destroyed by the colossal weight of the head.”
Who were the Olmecs?
During the Mesoamerican Preclassic Period (2500 BC – 200 AD), the Olmecs (“inhabitants of the rubber region”) They lived mainly in what is now part of the southeast of the state of Veracruz and the west of Tabasco.
This was actually the nuclear area of the oldest culture in Mesoamerica, although it must be said that later archaeological evidence speaks of an Olmec presence, that is, de marked cultural features, in other areas such as Chiapas, in the central valleys of Oaxaca and in the Balsas Depression in Guerrero.
The truth is that Mesoamerican trade networks meant that over time many of these Olmec cultural traits spread beyond their original metropolises, issues such as for example the cult of the Feathered Serpent who adopted many of the later cultures; In fact, Coatzacoalcos, an eminently Olmec area, means: “Place where the snake hides,” which was where legend has it that Quetzalcóatl fled to Central America.
It is therefore an incontrovertible fact that The Olmec culture had a determining cultural and religious influence throughout Mesoamerica, at least until the end of the Preclassic Period.
The oldest archaeological evidence that has been found of the Olmec culture dates from 1200 BC, and the most recent from 400 AD and based on the findings of their most important settlements, Tres Zapotes, La Venta and San Lorenzo, it is concluded that The Mother Culture was established mainly in what is now the Gulf of Mexico, specifically in the coastal plain that extends between the Papaloapan River and the Grijalva River; that is, as said before, in the states of Tabasco and Veracruz.
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