Greetings, Zapata Moles
Fernando Palma Rodríguez
An early installation made by Palma as a resident artist at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. This is one of his first robotic-mechatronic devices, combining elements that directly allude to the uprising of the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional that same year, as well as to the memory of the seamstresses killed in the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, and to the artist’s own family history. Each of these sewing machines, intervened with wrestling masks, represents a member of a family; through sensors, a kind of communication emerges among them.
Palma’s work engages in the constant resignification of many different tactics and technologies, participating in a form of indigenous cultural and political recognition. He maintains a position of resistance and cultural invention in his advocacy for indigenous cultures, particularly for the survival of his own Nahua ethnicity. This orientation encompasses both his artistic practice and Calpulli Tecalco, the civil society organization he co-founded in the Mexico City borough of Milpa Alta (Malacachtépec Momoxco, in the Nahuatl language).
FERNANDO PALMA RODRÍGUEZ (1957)
Greetings, Zapata Moles, 1994
Installation. 4 intervened sewing machines, lucha libre masks, cables, sensors, corn seeds, paper bag, and religious icon
Variable dimensions
Piece made for the Rijksakadamie Open Studies
Acquisition with funds from the Government of Mexico State, 2012
