Ximena Garrido-Lecca: Reverse Engineering – Bonsack rolling machine, 2023

Ximena Garrido-Lecca (44 J., lebt und arbeitet in Lima und auch Mexico City). Sie stellte mit ihrer Kölner Galerie Gisela Capitain auf dem letzten Kölner Kunstmarkt diese große Skulptur aus, zu der es im Videotext heißt: „…a sculpture that the artist created for her exhibition at CAN Centre d’art Neuchâtel in 2023. “For the exhibition Reverse Engineering, Ximena Garrido-Lecca based herself on the first cigarette rolling machine whose invention in 1881 revolutionized the tobacco industry. She reproduced it exactly, piece by piece, from the patented plans. But instead of using the materials needed to make a functional model, she substituted them with a paste made of tobacco leaves and ashes, a ritual object with magical and purifying virtues called San Pedrito. The reference to reverse engineering is to be considered not only in its proper sense: the study of an object to understand its functioning and method of manufacture; but it also evokes the idea of a rewinding, a potential rewinding of history. Ximena Garrido-Lecca inverts the function of this machine, transforming it into an unproductive object and proposes to assign it another more mystical purpose; like a rotary press, which, instead of printing and spreading daily the news of the day, would swallow them every morning in order to reconsider their essence and transform them into salvific incantations” (Text by CAN Centre d’art Neuchâtel).  Hier der Bericht von VernissagenTV :

Im vergangenen Sommer war es im Centre d’Art Neuchatel (CH) zu sehen.

Und hier die Patentzeichnung der ersten Zigarettenrollmaschine der US-Firma Bonsack, ca.1880

(Quelle siehe Link vorher)