Voces monumentales, 2018
XIV Biennial of Cuenca, Ecuador
Living structures: art as a plural experience
Honorable mention (Municipal Museum of Modern Art)
Curated by Jesús Fuenmayor
The origin of the word "monument" comes from the Greek mnemosynon and the Latin moneo, monere, which means "to remember", "to advise" or "to warn" which suggests that a monument allows us to see the past thus helping us to visualize what is to come. in the future.
Benigno Tenesaca, Esperanza Tacuri, José Farfan, Guillermina Litoma, Victoria Benenabla and Cecilia Alvarrasin are some of the people who work daily in Calderón Park and in several cases for decades. The voices united in these "conversations in the park" are testimonies collected from their personal lives, their job prospects and they become part of the vox popoli in reflection on the soul of a city-between its past and its future-inserted in the debate on public space and its heritage aestheticization. The showcases that are parasitically coupled to their workstations contain moments, books, images and objects, which were chosen based on criteria that allude to an individual narrative within the collective.
The sculpture in the room weaves these voices together and emphasizes the humble monument made in Cuenca pink marble to Coronel Luis Vargas Torres who was shot in that same place on March 20, 1887. Vargas Torres was one of General Eloy's trusted men Alfaro as the military and political leader of the process that led to the Liberal Revolution. The execution was directed from Quito with the complicity of the local conservative authorities. Curiously, the now named Parque Calderón at one point received, by decree, the name of Plaza De Vargas Torres, but was acquitted by the conservative elite of the time.