Aire Especial para Batir Records
June 6-13, 2009
Windows Brooklyn
157 Smith Street

Aire Especial is a site-specific installation based on the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. Aire Especial includes a full-scale window drawing, sculpture, a meditative drawing, and digital prints. As part of Windows Brooklyn, I was paired with a sneaker boutique, Rime, on Smith Street. 

The title of the installation is borrowed from small metal souvenir boxes available during the Games. The keepsakes were said to be inscribed with the following: Aire de Mexico, Aire Especial para Batir Records (Air of Mexico, Special Air for Breaking Records). Though I have yet to find any photos of these boxes, I find very powerful the idea of a keepsake that contains the vital air of the events of 1968. My replica souvenir acts as a mini-altar, offering a connection to the bravery, determination, sacrifice, and energy of the people and events of 1968.  Each work in the installation aims to display and activate the collective memory of the '68 Games.  In Rime's freestanding advertising display, I inserted a two-sided, seven foot tall poster.  One side of the poster juxtaposes images of the athletes of the Games with the attrocities of the concurrent Tlatelolco masacre. The reverse side of the poster presents some of the CIA documents retroactively released by Presidente Fox and Clinton as an acknowledgement of the atrocities.  Lance Wyman's emblematic logo of the '68 Games serves as the source for a meditative drawing.  Titles are as follows:

Mexico ‘68, Ink on glass, 97x64”