Portable sculpture that activates the route between Helen Escobedo´s. "Doors to the Wind" and Faro Tláhuac community center.
By Sarah Gilbert and Valeria Florescano
(photo 1.) While working in a community art workshop at Faro Tláhuac on October, 2016 with artist Sarah Gilbert, we planned this route (photo 2.) with a reflective glass device attached to the bicycle deforming everything it reflected cycling the route to the 1968 urban sculpture by Helen Escobedo “Doors to the wind”. We were interested in working with the site specificity of this monument because it represented Helen Escobedo´s interest in impacting the cultural and environmental policies for Mexico city in the frame of the 1968 Olympics. She was expressing her interest for the city to maintain its green areas, 40 years ago this monument was surrounded by fields of barley, and is neighbor to the lacustrine site of Xochimilco the last remains of the prehispanic water culture the city had before the Spanish colonization (former Tenochtitlán). Today we can see (photo 3) how the sculpture has been limited on both sides by a high-speed track, large volumes of traffic and kilometers of construction.The intention of this action with participants wa to reactivate "Doors to the Wind" and what It represents ,and to underline how the city has pushed its natural areas to the last limit possible.