Identifying Mexico

I'm finding it difficult to know what to write about our week in Mexico City. Like Beijing, Mexico City overwhelms you. It's geographically vast, sprawling densely across mountainsides and valleys at an altitude of over 2,200 metres. It leaves you slightly breathless, literally. It's crowded with people - depending on how you measure populations, more than 20 million of them in Greater Mexico City - so getting around can be a series of challenges. It has wide-spread and well-developed transport systems, though they're often very crowded and require local knowledge to negotiate. There's so much to be commented on, but my knowledge is so shallow that I feel rather intimidated.

But as I keep telling myself, my blog is for myself, as much as it is for others, so I want to record some impressions.

It was interesting coming to Mexico after visiting the USA, where I'd seen the wonderful results of philanthropy in action in the artistic and cultural worlds; the Walt Disney Centre for the Performing Arts in LA, the Nasher Sculpture Centre in Dallas, LACMA, to name just a few. In Mexico City it seems that the role of promoting the cultural life of the city, and the country more generally, had been taken on by the state. (As an aside, it seems to me that we in Australia fall very much between two stools in this regard - neither the state nor philanthropists consistently act to promote our cultural life.) In addition, in Mexico City there seems to be a desire to make art accessible to the people, and to encourage thinking about national identity through public and popular structures and events.

This is probably most evident in the wonderful Museum of Anthropology. The two-storey Museum is built around a central courtyard. On the first level is the rich material culture of pre-hispanic Mexico, organised into rooms to display the variety and richness of the various regions and cultures. The Mexica (Aztec) culture of what is now Mexico City takes pride of place in a grand double-height central display:



Artifacts from other Mexican cultures and traditions, such as these grand and beautiful Olmec heads, are arranged in rooms along the sides of the building:



The second level of the Museum displays how people of the various regions live today, with the current-day practices located directly above those of their ancestors. We had limited time and energy, but explored the display from the southern Oaxaca region where we planned to visit. Oaxaca is also the region with the richest textile tradition - a predictable reason for me to visit!



In a clearing outside the Museum is a display of the Totonic 'voladores' (flying) rite. The voladores circle a 20 metre high pole, chanting to drums and a pipe. Five of them then climb the pole and while one sits at the top, playing drums and pipe, the others gradually 'fly' in circles, upside down, hanging by one ankle, as ropes release them from the top to the bottom of the pole. It's a ritual that you almost can't watch as their strength and bravery are tested.




Mexico has a long-established tradition of using murals in public spaces to inform and educate its people. In the twentieth century this tradition has been used to reinforce Mexican identity, but has also resulted in grand, publicly accessible works of art. We visited the campus of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM) where the Central Library, is a ten-story artistic creation, depicting the history of Mexico from pre-hispanic times. The whole building is covered with mosaic stone murals designed and created around 1950 by artist Juan O'Gorman. All the mosaic stone tiles are in their natural colours - sourced from all around Mexico.



The Library, together with other university buildings, such as the Rectory, with its 3D murals by renowned artist Siqueiros showing the people urging the students to reform and advance the country, have been declared a UNESCO World Heritage site.



UNAM, by the way, was established in the sixteenth century, has over 300,000 students, has negligible fees, and has highly selective entry.

One day we were delighted to happen upon a street parade of colourful, fantastic creatures advancing along nearby Reforma - one of the grand central avenues of Mexico City. The city was promoting what we assumed was a competitive display of the creative imagination and skill of various local groups and associations. Giant versions of alebrijes, colourful ceramic figures of fantastic animals, insects and birds, had been recreated from papier mache, feathers, and fabrics and mounted on hand-pulled carts. Some had articulated limbs and many were guided by their handlers with swooping, dancing movements into the watching crowd.




The parade went on and on. There must have been at least 40 of these wonderful creations advancing along the street. A couple of days later we saw that they had been grouped along the broad median strip of another street for passers-by to continue to enjoy the spectacle. Maybe I'm romanticising what we saw, but this colourful parade seemed to be yet another public promotion of popular art to emphasise Mexican identity and traditions.

Frida Kahlo was an artist who painted from the 1920s to the 1950s and is now an international icon whose image is emblazoned on tee-shirts and handbags around the world. Many of her works are colourful, naive, often horrifying self-portraits. Over more recent years she has become a public symbol of much that is essentially Mexican, dressing in colourful clothes and exotic jewellery drawn from indigenous traditions, personally presenting an image of female beauty that is distinct from European traditions, and painting a combination of suffering and celebration that seems distinctively Mexican. Kahlo also had links with many of the world revolutionary figures of the time, and saw no contradiction between advancing Mexican identity and promoting international socialism. We, like many other tourists, visited the Museo Frida Kahlo in Coyoacan. Frida Kahlo was born, worked in, and died in the 'blue house' that now houses the museum. The museum has a small selection of her paintings, with a focus on early portraits of her family and friends. I was rather taken by 'Frida and Stalin', where Stalin and the objective of world revolution loom over a stationary figure of Frida.



Some parts of the museum attempt to recreate Frida's life in the house. The dining room and kitchen, with their distinctive Mexican colours and display of pottery and other artifacts, including the skeletons so central to Mexican iconography, reveal Kahlo's immersion in Mexican craft traditions (though you can't help feeling everything is much cleaner and neater than it would have been in Frida's time).



Upstairs, Kahlo's studio, with the wheelchair that she used for much of her life, is particularly poignant.



Mexico City is a bustling, crowded, international city. But it's also a city where you can't linger long without becoming aware of its very distinct national identity and of the many and varied ways in which that identity is promoted by the state through its art and craft traditions.

People in boats

With all of the current heart-breaking rhetoric around people in boats seeking asylum in Australia, this artwork is just so right for its time.



Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art recently commissioned its second wall painting for the entrance way - a huge work by Chinese-Australian artist Guan Wei. It's populated by Guan's usual whimsical figures with their mouths shaped by cries or laughter - though in this particular case I have no doubt their cries are of anguish. Guan says this of his work:

I have observed that much of our daily news is filled with stories of refugee ships arriving in Australian waters...As an Australian immigrant and as an artist, I am able to not only identify with but also help relate and bear witness to (the refugees) solemn, stirring and tragic story...

As you go up the stairs you follow the immigrants' journey, from the mythical dragon-lion creatures of their past,



through the horrors of the sea voyage, with accompaniments of helicopters and navy vessels (evoking both their strife-torn past and surveillance-ridden present)



to arrival in Australia.



I love the way the arrival scene reminds us of the first arrival of European boat people who were forced to flee their pasts. The Museum's location at Circular Quay where that first influx of immigrants occurred, like many to follow, adds even deeper emotional resonance. In Guan's words it's 'a place that links the past with the present, you with me, and Australia with the world'. Such wise words. The painting reinforces my feeling that what distresses me most about the current debate about people in boats is its denial of both our history and our ties with the wider world.

As a post-script - the earlier wall-painting commissioned by the MCA also pleased me greatly - for very different reasons



It was a neat, precise, geometrically pleasing repetition of orange triangles painted by Sydney artist Helen Eager. I loved it. But look what I have hanging on my hallway wall:



Yellow triangles, in pastel on paper, also by Helen Eager. It also give me great pleasure.

Marking Chinese New Year in Young

I guess most countries have events in their history which are shameful by modern standards. In Australia we certainly have such incidents in the story of European settlement and its impact on Aboriginal Australians. More generally, the history of race relations in Australia since European settlement can unsettle and challenge many of today's more liberally-minded inhabitants. It's hard to know how to mark these events for modern-day Australians. You can't 'celebrate' actions that deny people equality on the basis of their race, but I think it is important to mark them and to acknowledge that these events have been part of our past and have shaped our present society.

I've been thinking about these matters because I visited the south-west NSW town of Young again to help my cousin sort and distribute the possessions of another cousin who died recently. We had some time to spare and decided to follow the sign to the Chinese Tribute Gardens that we'd passed many times on our way to and from our cousin's residence. I'd expected that the Gardens would in some way mark the 'riots' between Chinese and European goldminers in the mid-nineteenth century. Young began its history with the name 'Lambing Flat' and is infamous in modern Australian history for the 1861 conflict between Chinese and European miners who flocked to work the recently discovered gold deposits. There was a history of tension between Chinese and European miners in many goldfields across the 1850s and it is generally agreed that the conflict at Lambing Flat was the most violent and presented the greatest threat of civil unrest. The riot was in fact a number of attacks by European miners on the Chinese in the early part of 1861 that resulted in a police and military presence in Lambing Flat for a large part of 1861 and an uneasy truce with Chinese and European miners in segregated areas of the goldfields.

These events reflected many of the debates and tensions within parliament and the wider society and resulted in the passage in the NSW parliament of the Chinese Immigration Regulation and Restriction Act 1861 - a precursor of the infamous White Australia Policy.

Anyway, back to our visit to the Chinese Tribute Garden:



It was a lovely place to visit on a hot inland day - coincidentally at the time of Chinese New Year. There are some of the required elements of a Chinese garden - plants, water and rocks, though the garden misses the element of a pavilion or contemplative room. There's an arched bridge, a gateway, ducks and swans, and meandering walkways that frame the views. However, there's a spaciousness that I don't remember in any of the Chinese gardens I visited in China, and the bright blue sky and surrounding gum trees are of course very foreign to traditional Chinese gardens. But all in all, it's a real pleasure garden.


What surprised me was the information plaque at the entrance to the garden. No mention of the Lambing Flat riots. The plaque tells the history of the garden site. The small lake around which the garden is based is called 'Chinaman's Dam'. A creek was originally dammed by some European miners to facilitate alluvial mining and was later sold to a group of Chinese miners - hence the dam's name. Even this is a story of loss and dispossession for the Chinese miners. The sale was never formally registered and the land was resumed as Crown Land which it remains until today. The plaque goes on to say (without evident irony) that the garden is a tribute to the contributions over many generations that Chinese Australians have made to our history.

We also had time to visit the Lambing Flat Folk Museum in town and amid all the random elements of small-town historical museums (which in this particular case included my Auntie Mollie's exquisite cream-coloured satin wedding dress from the late 1930s) we found a detailed and dispassionate retelling of the story of the goldfields' conflict and the original roll-up banner under which European miners had marched on the Chinese miners.

I'm really not much further ahead with knowing how to mark such events in our history. But I do know we must continue to tell the stories, and we must realise that some of the vaunted events of our past - such as the Eureka Stockade or the events leading to Federation - were near neighbours and sometimes bedfellows of racist and unjust actions and laws.

Purl and plain - in all sorts of combinations.

I was listening to Radio National Breakfast this morning when the presenter, John Doyle, had a brief, informal interview with the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. They discussed the break she'd taken over the Christmas / New Year period and he asked the PM what she enjoyed doing in her 'down' time. She mentioned the pleasure she took in knitting.

John Doyle has the most ironic voice on radio - perhaps even in the entertainment business more generally. I never know when he is sending someone or something up or when (if ever) he is being serious. He compared her knitting to the leisure pastimes of previous PMs - Empire clocks and Mahler (Paul Keating), punting and sport (Bob Hawke) reading and history (Gough Whitlam). He commented that he really didn't get knitting as a hobby - though I'm not sure whether he was sending himself up with this comment.

Anyway, trust Julia Gillard to spring to the defence of knitting:

Being prime minister is a pretty stressful job. There’s a lot on your shoulders, you often get back at home late at night, and you’ve got to get some sleep, you can’t stay up pottering around for hours.'

The thing that’s good about the knitting is that it takes up enough of your attention that your mind can’t race at a million miles an hour, but it's repetitive and soothing, so it helps you transition from work.

She summed it up as 'purl and plain - in all sorts of combinations'.

I love the fact that we have a Prime Minister who is a knitter.

The only good thing...

From my point of view the only good thing about Saturday evening and the interminable and distressing election coverage was that I made significant progress on my current Personal Sock Club socks.



It's the Tsunami pattern from Judy Sumner's Knitting Socks East and West. I like the way the reverse stocking stitch diamonds create shadows, and, when combined with the distantly spaced largish cables, give an impression of folds and creases. Like origami creases. I'm knitting these on 2.75m bamboo dpns and hoping the slightly larger needles are sufficient to compensate for the way the cables will pull in the socks. The yarn is lovely madelinetosh in Scarlet.

I am so behind with this pair of socks. My self-imposed deadline for these is 27 August - only four days away. I've no hope of finishing them in time, but watching the election did at least enable me to make a start.

The election? I'm too disappointed to write much about it. Having survived with such pain all those years under Howard it was such a relief when he was gone. The Liberal Party under Tony Abbott will be even worse. Unthinkable. My best hope is that Labor will be able to cobble together a minority government which will have to make significant compromises with the Greens (a good thing) to get any legislation through the Senate. But if the conservative forces form a minority government - chaos! disappointment! anger...

My heroes

I love the photograph on the front page of today's Sydney Morning Herald. My Prime Minister Julia Gillard being sworn in by my Governor General Quentin Bryce...and both of them are women.



Not only are both women, but they're both very admirable women. Both of them trained as lawyers and both have chosen to spend most of their adult lives in public positions. I admire people who choose to try to improve the world through changing mainstream institutions - it's often very difficult and gains can seem few and hard-won. Both have achievements in some of the areas I think most important in improving the position of women in Australia - industrial relations and their impact on women's work, and paid parental leave and childcare. Neither has had a career without conflict or setbacks, but both have persisted in achieving the outcomes from which we've benefitted.

Of course I'm regretful of the chillingly efficient way the previous Prime Minister was deposed. While Julia Gillard probably had little realistic choice but to accede in challenging for the leadership once the power brokers decided the Prime Minister was to go (I'm sure there were others aspiring to the role if Gillard had refused to challenge) it's a pity her undoubted quality and ability has not brought her the Prime Minister's role untarnished by the grubbiness of disposing of an incumbent Prime Minister.

One of my colleagues at work today pointed out that my Head of State, the Queen of Australia who is also the Queen of England, is a woman; her representative in Australia, the Governor General, is a woman; the Prime Minister is a woman; the Premier of the State in which I live, NSW, is a woman; the Queen's representative in NSW, the Governor of NSW, is a woman, and the Lord Mayor of the City of Sydney, my local government area, is a woman. Isn't that amazing! I can go even further - both my local State member of Parliament, and my Federal representative in Parliament are women. Everybody who represents me in any level of government is a woman.

If you'd told me in the 1970s when I first became aware of feminism that such a situation would be possible within my lifetime I would have been incredulous (though I would trade a popularly elected Australian Head of State - of any gender - for the Queen, any day). This is a moment of great hopefulness.

Now if we could just get real equal pay for women, more women on the boards of companies, cheaper or even free child care, better superannuation provision for older women...there's still so much more to strive for.