LA IMAGEN PERTENECE AL PUEBLO

Bárbara Palomino-Ruiz, La imagen pertenece al pueblo (The Image Belongs to the People), HD video, 9 min 38 sec, 2016.

“The image of the Virgin of Guadalupe cannot be considered a painting, because the hands that made it were not of this world…”
— Adolfo López Mateos, President of Mexico, 1958–1964

La imagen pertenece al pueblo emerged from observing the automated production of a series of iconic images and examines the veneration of the image as both sacred representation and manufactured artefact. Filmed in a textile factory in Mexico City, the video focuses on the mechanical weaving of the Virgin of Guadalupe—a national emblem, an object of devotion, and a contested symbol through which ideas of Mexicanidad have been constructed and expressed.

The image of the Virgin of Guadalupe is deeply embedded in Mexican visual and popular culture. It is continually reproduced, circulated, appropriated, and recontextualised on mugs, T-shirts, murals, posters, and countless other objects. In the factory documented in the film, it reappears as a series of devotional tapestries. Organised within the grid of the textile, Guadalupe becomes one element in a tightly repeated sequence of identical images that appears capable of extending indefinitely.

La imagen pertenece al pueblo reflects on the legends and systems of belief surrounding an image, but also—and perhaps primarily—on the time and labour involved in textile production. Through the repeated emergence of the icon within the mechanical weaving process, the work examines the relationships between human and machine, devotion and reproduction, magic and technique.