Miler Lagos
‘Desde el regazo de un pájaro. Genealogías y disidencias.’ MUAC Collection.
The University Museum of Contemporary Art (MUAC) presents this exhibition, which unfolds as a repertoire of approaches to the natural environment, its elements, and the beings that inhabit it, as well as their interactions and relationships.
The exhibition, which brings together works in which the representation of plants, animals, and territories expresses an awareness of forms of perception and means of artistic reproduction, includes the work of artist Miler Lagos.
Lagos explores the contradictions in our approach to nature, including the mysticism associated with the wild and primitive. As the first tree in his Magic Seeds series, this artificial trunk refers to the Axis Mundi or cosmic axis of the Mayan worldview: the four ceiba trees or Yaxché, located at the cardinal points, which sustain the universe. They connect the sky (located in the branches) with the earthly plane (the throne of the tree) and with the underworld (the roots).
Composed of thousands of Mexico City newspaper pages, stacked and shaped with a saw and knife, El soporte del universo (The Support of the Universe) makes explicit the systems of information distribution that are sustained by logging. The effect is disconcerting, because, on the one hand, encountering this large truncated tree evokes enchantment and romantic associations with the sublime in nature, while, on the other hand, the artifice of its production implies the massive exploitation of resources, the surplus of materials derived from it, and their subsequent waste, activating another, very contemporary form of rapture and surprise.
