Autorretrato fronterizo y chispeante abrazando el retrato de Gilberto Bosques, escuchando pirekuas y tragando esquites afuera de la catedral

Like many of Abraham Cruzvillegas’s artworks, Self-portrait bordered, sparkled, embracing the portrait of Gilberto Bosques, listening to pirekuas and eating esquites outside the cathedral was assembled using materials the artist found on location, in this case, collected near the Museo de Arte de Zapopan, in Guadalajara, Mexico, where the work was first shown.

Formally, the work is comprised of two material clusters that are in dialogue with one another. One protrudes upward with a slender, reed-like shape weighted down by a stack of concrete tiles. The other is a collection of construction metal and wooden bars arranged like sparks, or the rosette leaves of an agave plant shooting outward and upward from a central point. This work belongs to the series “Autorretrato,” which, as the title suggests, involves the artist reflecting on the Mexican diplomat Gilberto Bosques (1892–1995). Before beginning his diplomatic work, Bosques served as a leftist legislator and combatant during the Mexican Revolution. During one of his stations as a consul in Marseille in the 1940s, Bosques took it upon himself to rescue several thousand exiled Spanish Republicans and Jews, assuring they were not sent back to Spain and Nazi Germany. However, he did not receive much praise for his heroic actions and he remained largely unknown internationally until several years after his death, when his story came to light and his actions were celebrated.

In 1944, Bosques said about his efforts: “I followed the policy of my country, of material and moral support to the heroic defenders of the Spanish Republic, the stalwart paladins of the struggle against Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Pétain, and Laval.”

(Text written by TBA21 and used as wall label in the exhibition "Abundant Futures", C3A, Córdoba, 2022)