Overview
- LACMA installed Pedro Reyes’s four-metre volcanic-stone face, Tlali, on the new David Geffen Galleries, prompting an open letter by nearly 80 Mexican cultural figures who say it reprises his canceled 2021 proposal for Mexico City.
- Critics argue a non-Indigenous male artist should not represent “the Indigenous woman” and say the design repeats stereotypes rooted in colonial views of Indigenous cultures.
- The letter also faults a title change from Tlalli to Tlali and the use of a Nahuatl word to name an Olmec-inspired form, calling these choices signs of poor cultural framing.
- LACMA says the work differs in purpose and meaning in a museum context, with director Michael Govan calling it androgynous and fragment-like and a spokesperson citing a phonetic rationale for the spelling, while Reyes has not commented.
- The Mexico City plan was canceled after opposition from more than 300 figures, and the former Columbus site is now a feminist anti-monument known as the Glorieta de las Mujeres que Luchan, which critics say heightens the sensitivity around reviving the design.