The Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo MUAC (Contemporary Art University Museum) located in the Cultural Center of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). It’s the largest public institution in Mexico to accommodate a collection of national and international contemporary art.

Resplandor y soledad / Splendor and Solitude (2010) curated by Ben Tufnell, is the first solo show of Cai Guo-Qiang in Latin America. For the show, the artist constructed a landscape of volcanic rocks and a lake of mezcal (a distilled alcoholic beverage made from the maguey plant) as a representation of the Lake Texcoco.

The legend says that by the commandment of the God Huitzilopochtli, the Mexicans were to start a pilgrimage until they could find an eagle eating a snake in the top of a cactus. The site where they found this signal was going to be the place from where they should build the city of Tenochtitlan. The Mexicans saw the signal of the eagle on a small island in the middle of the Lake Texcoco. They settled their city in this point.

Qiang displays, around the lake, a sequence of 14 gunpowder large scale drawings representing the syncretic elements of the Mexican culture, landscape and the foundation of the city. The drawings were produced in Mexico City with the help and collaboration of art students from the National Fine Arts School (ENAP).

Cai Guo-Qiang: Resplandor y soledad at MUAC, Mexico City. The exhibition runs until March 20, 2011. Video by VTV Correspondents Daniela Libertad and Rodrigo Hernandez C., February 19, 2011.

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