Achiote

Colombian artist Antonio Caro was invited to participate in the second edition of Sonora 128 with his 2002 work titled Achiote. Caro began to develop the work the moment he received, in 1999, a piece of the Mexican bark paper known as amate. Two years later, during the presentations of "Project 500 (1987-1992)," organized to reflect on American identity five hundred years after the arrival of Christopher Columbus, Caro conceived the possibility of materializing through his artistic practice the conferences and exchanges of the event. "The indigenous people painted themselves with achiote" was a phrase that this artist learned at school in Colombia early on in his life. This inspired him to draw on amate paper with the orange-marron pigment from the plant endemic to the American tropics. By painting with achiote Caro reclaimed one of the traditional means of expression used by indigenous cultures in America. His experiments with this natural colorant have ranged from drawings to performances, and the achiote pigment has even been turned into the work itself. Antonio Caro established a connection between the achiote and another plant endemic to the tropical region of the continent: the chicozapote tree from which the gummy latex known as chicle is obtained. For many years in Latin America Chiclets Adams was the only chewing gum brand available and, as result, that commercial monopoly became synonymous with the plant. On this occasion, Achiote takes the form of a billboard. By exhibiting it in a public space the piece acquires a level of interpretation that expands its original function. By applying the same typography used in the Chiclets Adam's logo—a resource commonly used by artists—Caro sends a critical message about reality. The space in Sonora 128 is the catalyzer of this work: "it completes it precisely because it employs the same language that seeks to denounce." Sonora 128 is an exhibition project on a billboard organized by Kurimanzutto and programmed by Bree Zucker. In the style of the vanguardist artists of public art, the billboard becomes a gallery with a single wall that seeks to provoke a conversation with a larger audience through the exhibition of important works of art in the public/urban space. During March 2016-2018, Sonora 128 will show large site-specific works by eight artists, each for a period of three months. The participating artists emerged from a wide ranging spectrum of disciplines associated with the fields of literature, music, and the visual arts. Sonora 128 is on display 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, at the corner of the Nuevo León and Sonora avenues, in Mexico City.