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"In this work, I explore the crossing of one culture by another and the intersections, omissions and fading of a culture. To develop the project, I worked with professional craftsman, Pedro Mendoza from Park Colón in Guatemala City, Guatemala. I provided him with a written description of specific figures from Greek mythology, as well as an image of an artefact or sculpture depicting each character. He was instructed to make a human size piñata, a traditional papier-mâché container, for each mythological figure."
The piñatas are intended for fiestas. They are ephemeral structures, created to be destroyed. The form and decoration of each piñata is the craftsman’s interpretation of the characteristics of each mythological creature. The piñatas represent the creativity and ingenuity of the Guatemalan craftsman, as well as reveal a particular Guatemalan interpretation of the characters from Greek mythology. This project contrasts the imagination of a person with Mayan cultural heritage, such as Guatemala, with fantasies from Greek antiquity, a symbol of Western civilisation.
The photographs of the created sculptures were made in public spaces of Guatemala that have references to classical antiquity or the mythological figure.
Astrid Blazsek-Ayala is an economist and artist from Guatemala. She has a PhD in Economics from University of Navarre, Spain (2010), and holds a degree in Advanced Studies in Photography and Management of Photographic Projects from La Fototeca and the University of San Carlos de Guatemala (2016). She has also studied several subjects in Node Center. She has participated in exhibitions in Antigua Tipografía Sánchez & De Guise (2020), Espacio Satélite (2018, 2019), Museo Arte Guatemala (2018) and Fototropía (2016). Her work is part of the publication Prisma Volumen II (2018). In 2017, she co-founded the Collective Agalma, Guatemala.
It was a monster with the body of a man and the head of a bull. His name means “Bull of Minos”, and he was the son of Pasiphaë and the Bull of Crete. It was locked in a labyrinth designed by the craftsman Daedalus, made expressly to retain it. The labyrinth was in the city of Knossos, on the island of Crete.
My interest in the mythological figure of the Minotaur of Crete can be traced to the stories The House of Asterion by Jorge Luis Borges and The Kings by Julio Cortázar. Unlike the classic stories, in the narratives of Borges and Cortázar the protagonist is the Minotaur and not Theseus. In Cortázar’s The Kings, the Minotaur is not a cruel and ferocious monster, he is a figure that presents sensitivity, depth of thought and poetic language. Theseus on the contrary, is ambitious and devoid of humanity. In Borges’ The House of Asterion, the Minotaur (Asterion) tells the story in first person. The Minotaur describes his house, a house with infinite doors that are open day and night. He is not a prisoner, there is no closed door. The labyrinth is the Minotaur, the Minotaur is the labyrinth. It may be that the Minotaur represents the unconscious, that the anguish points towards the labyrinth.
The sculpture of the Minotaur of Crete created by the professional craftsman represents virility, strength and ferocity. It is a projection of what a man “should be”. As in The Kings of Cortázar, the power of the Minotaur comes from his sex.
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