Pico y Elote - Corn and Industry

With José Esparza Chong Cuy as curator, readers are taken on a guided journey through the artist’s work, focusing on two concepts that function as metaphors throughout the journey: Cultivation and harvesting and industrialization processes. Reflexively, Ortega contrasts these concepts to tell an alternative story of the Mayan myth of creation – where corn is the origin of humanity – to reach the globalized post-industrial era and the chaos caused by longed-for progress. The concepts articulate the notions of energy, transformation, ecosystem and technology, the latter understood as a set of knowledge, instruments and technical resources that man has implemented to influence the world.