Erick Meyenberg

This two-channel video installation is the result of the artist’s residency at Casa Wabi (Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca), where Tadao Ando’s concrete architecture engages in a dialogue with the region’s natural exuberance.

Meyenberg collaborates with a group of gardeners from the residency, who are also musicians from the Costa Chica. Together, they undertake a double funeral procession: a walk through the architectural structure and a journey by boat through the Manialtepec Lagoon, an area affected by desiccation and tourist development.

The piece explores the traces of colonial violence and ecological exploitation. The musicians interpret an intervened musical piece of European origin, which blends with the imitation of birdcalls—both from species currently present and from those that have ceased to migrate. The colored bars they carry function as a visual coding of these vanished species.

The work’s title is taken from Christopher Columbus’s Journal. The phrase, spoken hours before sighting the Americas, alludes to a call that signified hope for the sailors, yet historically marks the beginning of a brutal process of colonization.

— Museo Amparo