The gunshot
Lead, steel, felt, Persian rug & Full HD video 12min35sec, Variable dimensions, 2014
Bullets obtained through a contact within the Mexico City Metropolitan Police — said to be evidence materials and range ammunition, a claim that could not be independently verified — are melted and recast as cymbals: instruments designed to resonate, left unplayed above a carpet.
The transformation is technically complete but functionally void: the material is given a form defined by sound, while being permanently deprived of it. Violence remains embedded in weight, toxicity, and origin, reconfigured into an object that can only hold what it was meant to release. The unverifiable provenance is not incidental — it mirrors the opacity through which institutional force habitually operates. The carpet situates the work between ceremonial display and domestic staging.
Performance presented at Ex Teresa Arte Actual, Mexico City, performed by Diego Bernal, professional percussionist