Last days to visit the exhibition “It is corpse, it is dust, it is shadow, it is nothing” by Antonio Vega Macotela, on view at Labor until May 3rd.

This is the latest chapter of his research on Q’aqchas, a multicultural group of clandestine miners active in the colonies of New Spain during the 18th century. On the front side of the altarpieces, we can see human figures derived from avatars created with the software MakeHuman: they evoke each of the castes comprised by the Q’aqchas, on a gold background that recalls New Spain’s golden altarpieces, as well as colonial and contemporary mining activity.

The back side of the objects depicts the topographic map of the 6 more exploited mines for the extraction of minerals used by the tech industry. These images correspond to the Potosí mine (Bolivia), which in precolonial times was the object of native devotions: once in contact with the Spanish devotion to the Virgin Mary, both united in a spiritual and aesthetic syncretism.