“Erick Meyenberg: The wheel bears no resemblance to a leg is the end result of the artist’s collaboration with members of the high school marching band, Banda de Guerra Lobos, at the Colegio Hispanoamericano in Mexico City. Meyenberg and the teenagers—together with curators, guest musicians, composers, costume designers, and a video production team—co-created choreographies, musical scores, and a series of performances that took the band through some of the city’s most emblematic and politically marked sites: the Plaza de Tlatelolco, where striking university students clashed with the state in 1968; the Monumento a la Revolución, commemorating the Mexican Revolution of 1910; and the Forum Buenavista shopping center, symbolizing Mexico’s embeddedness in transnational capitalism.

Composed of a three-channel projection, flags, a relief sculpture, and archival materials, The wheel bears no resemblance to a leg takes its enigmatic title from the 1917 prologue to Guillaume Apollinaire’s 1903 play Les mamelles de Tirésias (The Breasts of Tiresias). Meyenberg’s project translates these sources into a critical stance toward normative pedagogical structures—here taking the form of uniforms, discipline, education, gender, the state, and symbols of nationhood—and a conception of the “surreal” not as an evasion of reality, but as an invitation to surmount other realities. Culminating in a synesthetic experience, The wheel bears no resemblance to a leg suggests the complexities of Mexican modernity.” — Americas Society

Erick Meyenberg, The wheel bears no resemblance to a leg (video still), 2016. Courtesy of the artist.

Erick Meyenberg, The wheel bears no resemblance to a leg (video still), 2016. Courtesy of the artist.

Erick Meyenberg, The wheel bears no resemblance to a leg (video still), 2016. Courtesy of the artist.

Erick Meyenberg, The wheel bears no resemblance to a leg (video still), 2016. Courtesy of the artist.

Erick Meyenberg, The wheel bears no resemblance to a leg (video still), 2016. Courtesy of the artist.

Erick Meyenberg, The wheel bears no resemblance to a leg (video still), 2016. Courtesy of the artist.

Erick Meyenberg, Bandera II (Territorio, Tropa & Orden) (Flag II [Territory, Troops & Order]), 2016. Courtesy the artist. Photo by Charlie Villyard.

Erick Meyenberg, Bandera II (Territorio, Tropa & Orden) (Flags II [Territory, Troops & Order]), 2016. Courtesy the artist. Photo by Charlie Villyard.

Erick Meyenberg, Bandera III (Territorio, Tropa & Orden) (Flag III [Territory, Troops & Order]), 2016. Courtesy the artist. Photo by Charlie Villyard.

The exhibition is co-organized by Americas Society and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, and is curated by Americas Society’s Visual Arts Director and Chief Curator Gabriela Rangel and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ Visual Arts Director Lucía Sanromán.

Images courtesy Americas Society.