Oda a Eiffel
de Carmen Parra
In the mid-1970's artist Carmen Parra (b. Mexico 1944) was living in Paris. She bought her son a little fishbowl with a miniature Eiffel tower that inspired her and resulted in a large group of small-format drawings, engravings, and kakemonos (Japanese large scroll paintings) that represent her creative obsession with this particular Parisian landmark. Photographer Pablo Ortiz Monasterio (b. Mexico 1952) documented her urban interventions: a singular Ode to the Eiffel tower in which she unrolls her drawings for Ortiz Monasterio's camera in different sights around Paris, ending up across from the tower. Includes critical texts by Alain Le Gourrierec, Leonel Durán Solís, Roland Barthes and Dominique Legrand and the poem "La Graphosttique ou Ode a Eiffel" that Salvador Elizondo (b. Mexico 1932-2006) wrote in 1977.