Tania Candiani: Pulso

Tania Candiani is a Mexico City–based artist known for her multimedia and research-based installations and mixed media works that broach diverse methodologies and new ways of seeing the world. For over ten years, Candiani has created works that rely on literature, history, science, and nature as a means of creating compelling narratives that engage the viewer through compassionate, visual storytelling. 

​​The concept of flow and transit lies at the heart of the artist’s video installation Pulso (Pulse). Conceptually superimposing the underground rivers of the Mexico City basin with the transit lines of the subway system, a metaphoric and acoustic flow is created through a performance-based action executed by 200 women. Performed on Sunday, October 23, 2016, the women were organized in groups and instructed to travel from end to end along the twelve subway lines, getting off at all the stations and playing the pre-Hispanic teponaztli drum until the arrival of the next train.

Traditionally, the teponaztli instrument is believed to be the manifestation of a court singer kidnapped by the Aztec god Tezcatlipoca and sent back to Earth in object form. As teponaztli were played, the powerful sound made manifest supernatural forces. Pulso harnesses the ancestral divination of this instrument to speak to contemporary manifestations of feminine power and spirituality and its intrinsic relationship to labor and collective action.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website