An art community hotel in Mexico City is turning heads by using them as an object of destruction to a Tesla vehicle.
In a piece simply named Tesla Crushed by an Olmec Head, a Tesla is mangled under the weight of a stone face. The work of sculptor Chavis Mármol, the piece involves a replica Olmec head weighing approximately 9 tons sitting on top of a crushed blue Tesla Model 3.
The original Olmec heads are artifacts from the Olmec civilization, who are thought to have occupied a large part of what’s now Southern Mexico.
On Instagram, Mármol noted that the piece is a commission done with the support of the hotel featuring it, Colima 71. He also explained his aim for the artwork: “to troll Elon Musk and his new car plant in Mexico.”
News of the plant first came a year ago, when Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said he and Musk agreed on a plant in northern state Nuevo Leon. At first, López Obrador didn’t want a plant there since they require lots of water and the region already experiences water shortages. But Musk committed to steps such as using recycled water to alleviate the concerns. Since then, permitting delays have slowed the process, but construction is expected to start soon.
In a blog post about the piece, Colima 71 said it is “much more than a sculpture.”
“It is a provocative statement that seeks to subvert the status quo and question the prevailing narratives surrounding technological progress and rampant consumption,” read the post.
The piece is part of a series known as Neo-tameme. It came to Colima 71 after the curator at the hotel saw Mármol’s first piece in the series, an Olmec head used as a container to deliver orders in Mexico City.
The theme for the series has a fitting name. For the Nahua-Mexica peoples, the person in charge of carrying merchandise from one place to another on their back was the tameme, Colima 71’s blog explains. It goes on to say that Mármol sought to reinterpret this character through the sculpture.
And it wasn’t an easy task. The creative process extended over two years, the blog post explained. In that time, Mármol worked out the logistics of the project and obtained the car. But it was finally put on display earlier this month, and Mármol has shared insight on what viewers of the piece might notice about it.
