グアダルーペを探せ
Ryuichi Yahagi / Guadalupe
Observing the faces all at once, one is attracted at their great diversity. Not only the
Physical diversity of skin and hair color, or the prominent features of skull shapes, but also the originality and singularity of their makeup, and styles of dress. It is certainly not strange that each individual has a unique face distinct from the others. One can sense that they are not even trying to look like anyone else. It seems that to them it’s not important if the shadow of the eyes standout, losing the balance of the entire face, or if one side of the neck of the shirt is in or out, or if there nose hairs protrude. Perhaps this apparent inequality is based in the heterogeneity and the discontinuity of daily life where they live. Based on the photos it appears Ryuichi Yahagi detects in the name Guadalupe such a place in the continuity of the heterogeneous and the discontinuous.
Then what is Guadalupe?
It is the greatest object of faith in Mexico, a deeply Catholic country it is the Mexican version of the Virgin Mary. They say that, this virgin appeared in the 16th century a little after the Spanish conquest before the indigenous person Juan Diego, who had been converted to Catholicism. The virgin had dark skin and black hair, and spoke to Juan Diego in Nahuatl his indigenous language, ordering a church erected in her name.
Today the Virgin Guadalupe receives great devotion, and is celebrated in all of Mexico on the 12th of December each year. Thus, in this country where Christian names like Mary, Joseph, and Jesus are often given, women as well as men are named Guadalupe.
However what is important is that in this name is found a distillation of contradictions and paradoxes from which Mexico suffers. Before the 16th century there were dozens of languages and groups under diverse gods. The pre Hispanic tradition was so deeply established that it left Christianity with various imprints of syncretism. That image of the dark skinned Virgin that speaks Nahuatl is one of these imprints, one which suffers between two extremes of the plurality of polytheism and autochthonous and the Christian and modern ethos. For example many contemporary Mexican don’t speak indigenous languages and they think in Spanish a western language. One the other side, the people whose maternal language is one of the indigenous languages, sometime are ashamed to speak their language in the street which shows that the autochthonous is being rejected. In such a situation, furthermore, the Virgin Guadalupe never totally represents the abstract unit, In fact in spite of the recent decline of the Catholic tradition in the provinces where many more people are preserving it, they still frequently name their children Guadalupe. But at the same time there are occasions in which this same name symbolize the lower and marginal class and for that reason is avoided. It is in this way that Guadalupe embodies all of the contradictions and historical and regional paradoxes that surround modern Mexico.
How do we understand the work of Ryuichi Yahagi who finds and devoted to photographing “Guadalupes”, and exhibits their photo? Based on what was already said it would be too simple to say that this name itself unifies people. Although the name is the same it embraces historical and geographic elements so diverse that one is not able to find the simple homogeneity of the unit. On the contrary Guadalupe ought to be considered a group of diverse elements and contradictions that are mutually entangled. Each of the Guadalupes before us contains and manifests contradictions and paradoxes. Obviously the way of displaying are unique and in the Mexican sense heterogenic and discontinuous. The accomplishment by Ryuichi Yahagi no is to homogenize these Guadalupes from objective or abstract point of view; it’s more an attempt to connect them each time anew with various types of incompatible Guadalupes in apractical and personal from.
The number of photos exhibited before us is surprising. That Ryuichi Yahagi personally located more than 500 one at a time called for perseverance and this was done without advertising. This show that the daily life of Ryuichi Yahagi consists in entering repeatedly in a place of contradictions and paradoxes that appear together with the guadalupes. That says that his daily life is not daily in the ordinary sense. Perhaps his attitude has not changed in his encounters with the various “others” the are not named Guadalupe.
In the work “looking for Guadalupes” the “others” found are photographed and also exhibited as a work by Ryuichi Yahagi. From the perspective that a work necessarily expresses something about its author it follows that, in his work he himself is presented as a multiplicity of the historical and regional layers entangled through these Guadalupes, It is an answer the universal question “who am I”? At the same time it is an occurrence in which the supposedly unique author is substituted for the multiplicity that is found in his work. “I” is not the abstract unit, but it constitutes the “others” found in daily life Guadalupes that express their history and origins together with the contradictions and paradoxes from their own contexts. If this is correct the title of this same work could be taken to mean “I” is found inside myself. And the “it” who is found is nothing more than the “other” in a sense the author of the author and the multiplicity of the historical and regional layers that carry them.
Unversidad Nacional Autónoma de México (doctorarte in philosophy)
Nakano Hirotaka
