Cildo Meireles -How to Build Cathedrals

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1948 -
Missão/Missões [Mission/Missions] (How to Build Cathedrals), 1987
600,000 coins, 800 communion wafers, 2,000 cattle bones, 80 paving stones, and black cloth

Cildo Meireles’s installation was first commissioned for an exhibition about the history of the Jesuits in southern Brazil. The artist created a contemplative space that functions as a critique of Jesuit missions established during colonial times to contain the indigenous Tupi-Guaraní people and convert them to Catholicism. The work’s symbolic elements reveal the complicit relationship between material power (coins), spiritual power (communion wafers), and tragedy (bones), while the black shroud and overhead lighting evoke ideas of life and death. Meireles’ use of cattle bones references the importance of ranching within the region’s colonial economy. Yet the bones’ physical resemblance to the human femur also alludes to the human losses associated with forced acculturation.

blantonmuseum.org/chapter/material-as-metaphor-and-symbol/

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Taken on: April 2, 2017

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Sets appears in: • Strangers on the Street • Austin and Nearby more » • Murals, Sculptures and Public Art « less

Groups appears in: • Sculpture • Public Art more » • Art is Art « less

Camera: Nikon D7000, f/1.8, 1/125 sec, 35mm (=52mm), ISO 200 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Nikon D7000
Lens:	35.0 mm f/1.8
Aperture:	f/1.8
Exposure Time:	0.008 sec (1/125)
Focal Length:	35mm (35mm equivalent: 52mm)
ISO:	200
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Program AE
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
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