Guadalajara, Jalisco.- Thousands of weapons linked to criminal acts have been converted into 21 beautiful sculptures thanks to the creativity of the Jalisciense sculptor Alvaro Cuevas.The project entitled “Impacts that leave a mark” arose with the intention of transmitting a message of peace and reconciliation to the Mexican population that has suffered from high rates of violence for nearly a decade.
Short, long and even grenade-even weapons, in a total of 12 tons, were turned into art to show that humans have more powerful weapons to make themselves heard as literature or thought, said the author Alvaro Cuevas.La family of Cuevas has passed through various violent episodes where there was death. At various times and times, his brother was assaulted with a gun, some cousins and uncles were killed. This misfortune led the sculptor to consider “cleaning” or “compensating” in some way that family past and creating from it.
In 2017, when representatives of the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena) sought him to offer him to transform thousands of weapons seized and delivered by citizens, he knew that would be the way to achieve it.” It’s compensating through guns, the way I enamlist my art, it’s a way of healing, in which I process the information, once I digest it I’m sharing my process,” he said. Cuevas, 45, began to have contact with the already disabled armament and knew that the first thing he had to do was “purify” them. He recounted how he called priests and healers who performed rituals to free these objects from the intention with which they were created or used.
“Weapons when disabled are still what they were according to their fate, but if you get to transform you create an object and the concept is completely different, but it still has the essence and the intention, because even many were fired,” he explained. The 12 tons of metal began to take various forms. Animals, children and fingerprints were the result of about two years of work to join each piece and make sense of it. The sculptures are integrated into three collections: one of them shows wild animals such as a deer, jaguar, rhino, fish and an eagle that they murder instinctively, “unlike the humans we kill for pleasure”, notes the visual artist. Another series consists of the figure of three children holding weapons “as powerful as a brush or a book that talents can emerge.”
The tapatío artist Alvaro Cuevas poses with two of his 21 sculptures made with pieces of firearms collected through the federal program “Redeem of Arms”. Photo: EFE
The most special was the series of fingerprints in large format because it captures particular cases of murders such as that of the Cardinal of Guadalajara Juan Jesús Posadas, murdered in 1993 at the airport of this city.” They called it a special case, but all the cases are special. It made an impact internationally, and has a spiritual and religious involvement that carried a lot of responsibility,” he said.
The works were donated to various government agencies in the Mexican states of Jalisco and Yucatan to be exhibited on a permanent basis. Some others make up a traveling exhibition that has been taken to various spaces, cultural and civic activities in Mexico with the intention of reaching the message to anyone.
Cuevas said he intends to continue the project with 100 tons of weapons that would be donated in coming months by the Sedena.This time he will seek to distribute this material among 100 universities in Mexico so that his students generate artistic proposals contribute to “unity as Mexicans.” Universities that are sensitive to the subject are needed. Because of the situation in which we are living in the country is to reach a nation unification, rather than the weapons dividing us, conversely unifying us through transformation proposals,” he concluded.
Sculpture made by the plastic artist Alvaro Cuevas. Photo: EFE
