Uriel López

Proyectos Monclova presents Lupercal by artist Uriel López.

What does it mean to domesticate an animal? This is one of the questions that have informed the studies of the Mexican artist Uriel López. For the penultimate installment of the exhibition cycle El dilema de unir los puntos (The Dilemma of Connecting the Dots), curated by Néstor Jiménez, López presents Lupercal, a project that enables us to reflect on the similarities and resemblances between human and non-human animals. The exhibition combines earthenware and stoneware sculptures with color drawings, all works that invite us to question our supposed superiority to the animal world.

Since 2019, and specifically with the series of videos Fabulaciones (2019–2020) and his Malinche project (2023), Uriel López has collaborated with animal trainers to understand their methods and forms of communication. This has allowed him to create a body of work that explores not only the domestication of animals and their connectedness to humans, but also ideas of citizenship and the establishment of western civilization.

A number of disciplinary perspectives help us understand the origin of domestication, which, according to specialist Beatriz Vanda Cantón, is to be understood as a process that wrought important changes in species and favored an artificial selection. Domestication has resulted in morphological, physiological, and biological changes in response to a process of selecting characteristics compatible with human behavior. In dogs, for example, changes can be seen in softer, differently colored fur, less pronounced incisors, more submissive attitudes, and the variety of sizes. López’s ceramic sculptures engage with this situation by reproducing the forms of human and canine bones and then reconfiguring them into new, hybrid structures. In pieces like Goliath (cráneo), Composición #3 (Goliath [skull], Composition #3; 2024), the artist visualizes the interspecies contacts that have arisen over the course of history. The title of the piece alludes to the biblical character and the associated image of “David and Goliath,” which is used colloquially to describe a small opponent who triumphs over a bigger, stronger adversary. In López’s piece, the difference in sizes is obvious, but this serves to question human beings’ supposed superiority over and over-exploitation of the animal world.

Atlas (cervical), Composición #5 (2024) is another ceramic sculpture that the artist formulates as a cohabitation of two species. In human anatomy, the first cervical vertebra is called the atlas; dogs have this bone, too. It takes its name from the Greek mythological figure, Atlas, who bore the weight of the heavens on his shoulders. In the same way, for the piece Apolonia (caninos), Composición #5 the artist has created small representations of canine teeth placed atop steel asparagus stalks that float on the wall. Here there is a direct connection between canine teeth and canine species, but the juxtaposition of forms distorts their referents and invites us to imagine vegetable components. López presents these games with form and language as a subtle strategy for speaking about a more complex relationship between humans’ connectedness to animals and western sociocultural forms of knowledge.

Zooarchaeologists have taken a variety stances on the origin of domestication. One such stance identifies its beginning with the domestication of the gray wolf, after which came sheep, goats, pigs, and cattle (to name only a handful), until the process was completed with the bee. Some believe that men were the ones to make the wolf part of their environment, but others argue that wolves were integrated into human communities thanks to women and their daily activities. Both viewpoints postulate a process of coevolution and a mutually beneficial relationship between human beings and animals; archaeological evidence shows that animals fed on harvests and benefited from the refuse produced in a human settlement.

The series of drawings in color pencil in this exhibition presents a group of scenes in which different breeds of dog are being trained to perform searches and rescues. To accomplish these tasks, the trained dogs have had to use their body language to develop states of alertness and submission. In the artist’s words, these two basic forms of conduct resemble those that characterize good citizenship. The titles of the pieces refer to the specific activity the respective animals are carrying out: protector, shepherd, tracker, and pointer. Leticia López and Rogelio Laguna point out that “domestic animals ensure their survival thanks to their training,” meaning that an animal like the dog developed talents like learning obedience in order to survive in a human setting. To be sure, unlike cows and pigs, which have been objectified so they could become raw material for products of human consumption, dogs have established an affective intimacy that grants them the special status of being pets. By way of contrast, in the images that López presents us, some elements have been omitted in such a way that anyone who looks at them will not immediately recognize these behaviors and will therefore imagine other kinds of situations.

The title of this exhibition, Lupercal, refers to a Roman festival that was held from February 13–15 in celebration of the fertility of women and of nature. It was associated with Rome’s founding myth, which tells of how the twins Romulus and Remus were suckled by a she-wolf. In this story there is a unique subtext about the domestication and absorption of animal powers, but it is at odds with new discoveries about the origin of domestication, which indicate that women once suckled orphaned wolf cubs. As Donna Haraway points out in her book When Species Meet, there are other ways of thinking about domestication, some of which encourage better ways of living in a multispecies society. Our relationships to the animal and plant worlds have been characterized by colossal over-exploitation. To conclude, then, Uriel López’s project reflects on our position in the complex web of living beings.

–Adriana Melchor Betancourt