As part of its research in an urban environment, the Tercerunquinto collective has developed several projects that explore the symbolic use of public space through works that work with street graffiti, political propaganda, murals and graffiti. This type of project shows the impact that social demonstrations have on rural and urban spaces, the commercial and propagandistic use that bards and walls receive, as well as the different negotiations, exchanges and symbolic, social and political impositions that occur in the streets and highways of towns and cities. Arqueología del muro político (Archeology of the political wall). Palimpsest of preliminary studies, consists of a site-specific mural that collects different marks, slogans and ments found on walls in different parts of the country and photographically recorded between 2000 and 2015.
A palimpsest—a word that means "engraved again" and comes from the Greek palin, "again", and psaein, "engraving"—is a manuscript that contains within its surface the traces of a previous writing that was erased to make room for the one that exists today. Historically, and especially before the popularization of industrial paper, palimpsests were very common due to the lack of papyrus or parchment on which to write, which forced them to be recycled and reused. Today, this word has a broad meaning that alludes to all those phenomena where one writing is superimposed on another, leaving behind the traces of its predecessor.
The result of the "archaeological" work proposed by Tercerunquinto, and executed by sign painters from photographic records, is a palimpsest where the superposition of the elements that make it up—and that appear not as finished forms, but always as preliminary studies—evoke the indiscriminate use and abuse of public space by both commercial brands and the various political parties in election time, whether on urban and peripheral walls and billboards, as well as those located in towns and highways.
The ideological and graphic palimpsest generated by this collective evokes the fatuous and ephemeral character of the promises of advertising and electoral propaganda that characterize the public space and the visual environment of contemporary Mexico.
EKA, July 2020
Tercerunquinto. Unfinished Work (Exhibition catalog), Puebla, Amparo Foundation, 2019, 272 p.
As part of its research in an urban environment, the Tercerunquinto collective has developed several projects that explore the symbolic use of public space through works that work with street graffiti, political propaganda, murals and graffiti. This type of project shows the impact that social demonstrations have on rural and urban spaces, the commercial and propagandistic use that bards and walls receive, as well as the different negotiations, exchanges and symbolic, social and political impositions that occur in the streets and highways of towns and cities. Arqueología del muro político (Archeology of the political wall). Palimpsest of preliminary studies, consists of a site-specific mural that collects different marks, slogans and ments found on walls in different parts of the country and photographically recorded between 2000 and 2015.
