Client: MACG/Estudio Abierto
Primal worked with Estudio Abierto to develop the childrens guide for the exhibit "The Mexican Revolution In the Mirror of US Cartoons" presented to commemorate the centennial of the revolutionary war.
The goal of this project was to present an outsider's view of our internal realities, while also explaining the language of cartoons and its evolution through time. We kept in mind the capacity of cartoons to reconcile identity and otherness, critique and self-criticism, and we sought to represent this duality, and the subjective nature of perception, in the exhibit guide itself.
We set to work in four layers: one, displaying the passage of time in the changing façades of buildings; a second, using color to accentuate the changing vision of the U.S. towards Mexico; a third one, focusing on the narrative voices; and the fourth being a series of dialogs and exercises.
The Mexican and American flags share a particular shade of red, a color commonly associated with the blood shed in armed conflicts. We see in this a meaningful connection and decided to remark on it by coloring the central illustration with real blood. The blood was donated to us by a self-described cholo someone who truly bridges the Mexican and American identities.
