PARTE O PEDAZO

Tequila as a product, is inextricably linked to the development of modernity in Mexico. It is an icon of what is considered "Mexican" in all senses. Since the Mexican revolution, the most important sociopolitical event in the country of the twentieth century, land rights changed and this was one of the factors in enabling tequila production to flourish. This transition in Modernity is often depicted in the Golden Era of Mexican cinema; directors such as Emilio Fernandez and photographer Gabriel Figueroa evoked the aesthetics of the Revolution; the natural landscapes, indigenous figures, and patriotism, all of which are implicit in the manufacture of tequila. Along with these portray- als came the figure of the macho, with a strong sense of peasant pride and airs of heroism. My film is shot in black and white as a nod to this genre of cinema, yet the camera in my work is a 'she', an ironic twist on the matriarchal gaze in Mexican society where the mother figure is considered a saintly person uncontaminated by eroticism. The 'she' camera in my work seduces and eroticises, and satirically unbuttons masculinity, through close ups of the workers tools, clothes, jewellery, chest hair and the like. This exhibition tangles the uneasy relationship between industrialisation, nature and desire through the intoxication of alcohol, seen through the female gaze.