Following Jorge Méndez Blake’s practice of ‘language dismantling,’ in which every word of a text is used to create a new work, the artist takes the poet T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’ (1922) and translates it into a large-scale composition. The poem’s 3055 words – exploring social upheaval and psychological collapse – are scattered across the wall creating an unruly cacophony that invites the reader to decipher their own meanings. The landscape is defined by the relevance of certain words, creating tension between the visual and the written. Méndez Blake employs a modernist poem as a point of departure, a reflection of the current humanitarian global crisis, international conflicts, inequality, and ecological emergency.

Jorge Méndez Blake
Tierra baldía desmantelada (Propuesta de paisaje) / Dismantled Wasteland (Proposal for a Landscape), 2023
Paint and vinyl adhesive foil
157 1/2 x 393 3/4 in
400 x 1000 cm

Presented in collaboration with OMR, Mexico City, Mai36 Galerie, Zurich and Travesía Cuatro, Madrid.

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