Pulso: Tania Candiani (Part 1) — Couch in the Desert

from Tania Candiani, Pulso: Tania Candiani (Part 1) Photo D.K. Sole.

by D.K. Sole

To make Pulso, the Mexican artist Tania Candiani gave contemporary versions of traditional circular drums and teponaztli to one hundred and ninety-five women, dressed them in blue huipils, and sent them pounding and singing through Mexico City’s underground metro system. “What is the pulse of Mexico City today,” she asks in the wall text, “and is it possible to recover the ancient pulse of an old Aztec city?” That Aztec city is Tenochtitlan, whose brutalized stonework still haunts the current Mexican capital’s foundations. The performance must have been exhilarating to participate in and exciting to witness. At the ASU Art Museum she represents it with three rooms of things: a wall of ephemera documenting the organization of the event, a triple-screen video of the women on large wraparound panels, a wall covered from floor to ceiling with the percussion instruments strung up like 3D wallpaper, a huipil on a stand in front of a surface painted with cochineal dye, still photos, and footage of people trying out the drums. The installation is multi-faceted and engrossing, but does it answer her questions? What kind of pulse did the women create? The triple-screen film of the event chops them up as if they’re in a music video and the remixed sound doesn’t correspond to their actions, so we can’t tell. The schedules and official permits on the ephemera wall testify that the assembly was not a normal representation of “Mexico City today,” and the wall of teponaztli that recalls “the ancient pulse of an old Aztec city” is silent. “The answer to the second question,” I thought, depressed, staring up at the hollow wooden blocks, “is no.” On the other hand, wasn’t it prompting me to wonder what I was trying to imagine? That seemed like a success for Candiani. I hadn’t thought about the pulse of Mexico City before. Now I did. The wall text adds that this is the artist’s first solo US show in over fifteen years, a coup for ASU.

Tania Candiani, Pulso: Tania Candiani (Part 1)
ASU Art Museum, Arizona State University, Tempe Campus, 51 E 10th St, Tempe, AZ 85281
September 14th, 2019 – February 29th, 2020

Australian artist D.K. Sole lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, and works at the UNLV Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art where she is in charge of Research and Educational Engagement. She has exhibited in Las Vegas and Denver, Colorado.

Posted by Wendy Kveck December 27, 2019.