El hijo/The Son (2008) by Tadeo Muliero

For this assignment I visited the Museum of Latin American Art or MoLAA, where I experienced one of their current exhibitions on display titled, “Extracorporeal: Beyond the Body” The exhibit is an ode to the Cuban artist Ana Mendieta (1948-1985) and explored the human body and its place in our world. The exhibit contained lots of different types of media, such as video, photography and sculpture. The piece that immediately caught my eye was a sculpture by the Argentinian artist Tadeo Muliero titled “El hijo/The Son (2008)”

The sculpture initially caught my eye because of how realistic it looked. The proportion and attention to detail is so precise that the figure becomes unnerving and at first I thought that perhaps it was an actual preserved human body. Naturally, this caused me to go explore the sculpture further. The sculpture “El hijo” is made of fabric, paint, fleece batting paper-mâché, hair and eyelashes. The head of the sculpture is a paper- mâché model of the artist and has hair and eyelashes which gives the sculpture its disturbingly realistic appearance, while the body of the sculpture is made of fabric painted in bright colors, the main figure is surrounded by colorful textile tubes.

In the artist statement, Muliero states that he wanted the sculptured to be a representation of being reborn and its connection to our ancestral roots which were common themes in Ana Mendieta’s work. In the figure I can see the theme or birth as the form that surrounds the main figure brings to mind a child being born as it emerges from its mother. In this sculpture the person being born is the artist and its emerging from its ancestry or culture, which is represented by the colorful figures that are painted on the main figure.

While I was initially drawn to the figure because I found it curious and a bit disturbing, after reading the artist statement the sculpture really resonated with me on a deeper level. It made me think about how when we are born we aren’t just physically birthed but we are also born into a culture which will shape and form our perspectives and experiences. It also made me think about the socio-economic privilege people are born into as for some their birth brings them into a space full of amazing privilege, while for others it can cause tremendous struggle.

I was also drawn to the sculpture because the artist provided the museum with the initial sketches for the piece and some of the prototypes that they created which I found fascinating, as I love to see how other artist work and create their art pieces. I would definitely recommend that people go see this piece in person as pictures can’t truly capture the experience, and the rest of the pieces on display are really fantastic and fascinating as well.