Field of Flags and Can you see me?
Part of the work we were doing in Puebla was part of two participatory art projects in collaboration with UK artist Jon Adams. The first, Field of Flags, is an ongoing installation and workshop series where participants remake pages from books into flags then plant them together. The act of planting them rewrites the landscape interestingly, and the documents of these transient fields link up the many people over the world doing this project in their local environment. So in Puebla, I bought a couple of old Mexican economy textbooks and brought them to the sessions. We made lots of flags, sometimes drawing on them to personalize them more, then taking them outside and planting them in the garden, by the road, any place the group was inspired to plant them. Everyone in the group took a different photo of their final installation.
The other project, ‘Can You see me?’ has been developed by Jon Adams, Olly Coulson and Cecilia Turk and is part of the ‘Collaborations’ project, delivered with Creative Junctions. The project explores the judgements people take against each other, asking its participants to consider how others see them, and if and how this diverges from how they see themselves. The artists chose 8 significant and adaptable words and people who take part in the project string these words together to make garlands, which they hang in interesting local places and document their presence.
We made garlands for the house and garden, and also coloured in and decorated the word-cards which appealed to us. At the end of the project, these were put together in one garland which we photographed in various sites in Puebla, such as this sculpture in the centre of the Zocalo (the main square).
We also each drew a self portrait, which will be added to the ‘Can You See Me’ collection, and will be exhibited later in the year.
