Tlalli

Description

Tlalli was designed by Mexican artist Pedro Reyes.^[11] A similar smaller version (less than 1 m (3 ft 3 in) in diameter) was exhibited in Lisson Gallery in New York City in May 2021.^[12] Tlalli was proposed to be made of volcanic rock and it was being sculpted in three workshops located in Iztapalapa, Chimalhuacán, and Coyoacán by women artisans and sculptors.^[13] The word Tlalli means "land" or "earth" in Nahuatl.^[11]

The sculpture was based on Olmec art, created by a pre-Columbian civilization that developed during the Mesoamerican Preclassic Era.^[9] Reyes was inspired by the Olmec colossal heads and said he had difficulty transforming Tlalli into a female figure since the original heads were based on men.^[13]

Tlalli was projected to be a head 6.5 m (21 ft) high, supported by an additional 2.5 m (8 ft 2 in) tezontle base.^[14] Its diameter would have been 5 m (16 ft) with an approximate weight of 150 t (150 long tons; 170 short tons). The eyes were inspired by those of a jaguar, and the lips were modeled on two snakes. For the hair, a pair of braids that converge at a point at the occipital region were chosen to form a symbol of Nahui Ollin, the Earthquake Sun.^[15] According to Reyes, he first designed her to have a bun but he was told by anthropologists that pre-Hispanic cultures used braids that imitated the appearance of ears of ergots.^[16]

Reception

The initial announcement received mixed reactions. Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador approved of the decision to use the sculpture.^[17]

The choice of Reyes as the sculptor received criticism, namely because he is neither a woman nor Indigenous.^[18] More than 300 people associated with the arts and cultural sector signed a petition to Sheinbaum requesting the exclusion of Reyes from the project and the creation of a committee composed of women from Indigenous communities to choose a monument to represent them. Reyes explained that the government had chosen him because there were few sculptors in the country specializing in monumental stonework and that the project had to be completed before March 2022.^[19] Due to the controversy, Sheinbaum determined that the Committee for Monuments and Artistic Works in Public Spaces (Comité de Monumentos y Obras Artísticas en Espacios Públicos, COMAEP) would determine the most appropriate option to replace Columbus.^[20]

Tlalli's name received negative commentary, including from Mixe linguist and writer Yásnaya Aguilar, who questioned the Nahuatl name when Olmecs would have spoken Mixe–Zoque languages. Aguilar also criticized the generalization of women in public sculpture, in comparison to men who are individually honored.^[21] Similarly, researcher Lucía Melgar commented that it represents women as "generic, mute and immobilized".^[21] Historian Federico Navarrete [es] said Tlalli exemplifies an "essentialist view of Indigenous people as all the same".^[21] Josefa Sánchez Contreras, Zoque PhD candidate in Mesoamerican studies, considered the proposal as an act of "desperate neoindigenism", which is added to other similar acts carried out by López Obrador during his presidential term, while in the rest of the country, infrastructure projects were developed on the lands of Indigenous peoples.^[22]

In response to Tlalli, on 25 September 2021, a group of feminists placed a purple wooden statue of a woman with a raised fist on the empty Columbus plinth. They symbolically renamed the intersection the Glorieta de las mujeres que luchan (Women Who Fight Roundabout). Additionally, they painted the names of murdered and disappeared women onto the metal police barricades.^[23]

Cancellation

On 12 October, Sheinbaum proposed installing an enlarged copy of The Young Woman of Amajac to replace the statue of Columbus.^[24]

Although the government of the city never announced the project's cancellation, journalists and academics have considered it canceled.^[25][26][27] According to Mexico City's Secretary of Culture, Claudia Curiel de Icaza, as of 2022 the project was still under consideration but The Young Woman of Amajac had higher priority.^[28]