Originally commissioned and produced by the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs for the exhibition, “Condemned to Be Modern,” at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery as part of the Getty's "Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA
Marcela Guerrero: La cinco esculturas que se encuentra en este espacio está basadas en un teatro de Los Ángeles que se llama “the Mayan.” El teatro in si esta basados en sitios arqueológicos de los Mayas.
Clarissa Tossin: Hola, mi nombre es Clarissa Tossin.
Las superficies que ves que parecen como piel fueron hechas con silicona. Son impresiones de seguimientos, partes de puertas, pared, otros detalles del interior del cinema, que fueron encontrados en cerámica Mayan, y también los murales Mayan de templos y sitios arqueológicos, donde tenían figuran danzando o figuras en ceremonias, performando.
Mi interés en el teatro Maya viene de la relación con la arquitectura Maya o Pre-Columbina, Mesoamericana. Como el interior de este teatro combina elementos específicos de tres diferentes sitios arqueológicos que fueron apropiados, recreados todos en colocados en un único espacio, en una ciudad que hoy en el presente tiene una comunidad de Mayas.
Mi interés era traer aspectos del cuerpo para la estructura del edificio, esa era la razón por la cual he hecho estas impresiones de silicón y de partes del edificio. Entonces el edificio adquiera una cualidad mucha más orgánica y maleable, que tiene mucho más una relación con el cuerpo que con las paredes rígidas, sólidas de una estructura arquitectónica.
Revisitar el Teatro Maya en Los Ángeles no como un edificio histórico pero como un edificio que tiene una historia, que se relaciona con la historia de la arquitectura Mesoamericana Pre-Columbiana y que podemos hacer revisitar esa historia e incluir esta historia dentro de una línea de edificios, culturas que van, para adelante del pensamiento de una arquitectura modernista.
This series of sculptures, The Mayan, is based on the interior design of the Mayan Theater, in Downtown Los Angeles.
I rubbed layers of silicon on sections of the walls and doors, and some other interior design details of the Mayan Theater and then peeled it out. I combined them with some hand gestures and feet positions that are based on ancient Mayan pottery and murals where dancers, or performers, or ceremonies are being depicted.
The Mayan Theater is a building that is really rich, in the way it used specific archaeological sites and mythological figures into its interior design. Part of my work was to find the original sources. Because it's really the combination of three archaeological sites, but made into a Theater.
In this series of sculptures I wanted to make the building dance, or to make the building embody some physical bodily qualities. That's why the imprints of the building are made out of silicon. It’s this really soft and drape-y material that speaks more to the body than the rigidity of walls and architectural structure.
It was an interest in architecture and the relationship with Mesoamerican and Mayan templar structure, and how it was recreated, reformulated, and how it became a historical movie theater in a city that today has big part of the population who is Mayan. I'm not sure how aware they are of these buildings. My question was, what does it mean to have these spaces as landmarks and historical buildings, and how they relate to the cultural fabric of that city today? It was interesting to do this archaeology of the present.
The work doesn't try to make a claim that it's closer to the Mayan culture than the building ever was—that it's acknowledging that the history of The Hollyhock House needs to be revisited and acknowledged.