Antonio Vega Macotela
Studies of Exhaustion III: The Mill of Blood, The Drop of Flesh, 2013, is an exquisite sculpture in the shape of a mill that evokes the human labor that was required to make gold coins throughout former Spanish colonies in the Americas. This beautifully rendered silver miniature is a likeness of a huge mill that is now in a Bolivian museum. Two other mills—one in Peru and another in Mexico—were powered by animals, but the Bolivian mill, located at too high an elevation, had to rely on power generated by Indigenous slaves from the Andes. Wealth was extracted not simply from the earth but also from the bodies of Indigenous Americans.
SITElines.2014
Unsettled Landscapes looked at the urgencies, political conditions and historical narratives that inform the work of contemporary artists across the Americas – from Nunavut to Tierra del Fuego. Through three themes – landscape, territory, and trade – this exhibition expresses the interconnections among representations of the land, movement across the land, and economies and resources derived from the land.
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