'“Mi cosa es tu cosa”, Pedro Reyes on using social sculpture to create change' – Present Space

30 January 2024

Sculpture is at the core of Pedro Reyes’ work. Though much of what the Mexican artist creates is outside the realm of traditional sculptural practice, he nonetheless describes his work as “social sculpture”. Using performance, participation, and installation, Reyes’ work is recognisable for the playful and humorous approach he takes in addressing global sociopolitical issues, from gun culture and nuclear armaments to staging the experimental People’s United Nations conference in 2013. Alongside this collaborative art practice, Reyes is also interested in investigating histories of art. This aspect of his work is what he describes to Present Space as a “more classical” form of sculpture.

In recent years, his art practice has been informed by sculpture and printmaking—used by Reyes to explore traditional methods of art making that date back to Mesoamerican civilisations—as well as by the emergence of a new art style in the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution in the early twentieth century. After the revolution, artists turned away from the European canon to instead focus on the rich histories of art making that existed in Mexico. As Reyes explains, “Artists looked [at] what was right below their feet, acknowledging that there was an art history buried that was as important as any other in the world. When you’re coming out of a colonial period, you need to establish your identity as a country. And what Mexican artists did was to go to the ancient past and to the popular crafts to tell the story of the Mexican Revolution”.

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