Without answering these questions but suggesting that the meanings are linked to the answers, Rodrigo Hernández addresses the past in his mother tongue - Mexican Spanish. Beyond linear time, Pasado (Past) is an elegy, a melancholy and intimate poetry inspired by the museum’s pre-Columbian collection.

The “undisciplined” montage of objects, artefacts and works of art evokes the surrealist universe, and also the colonial-modern project in the Americas. Far from European transparent and universal reason, under the tropical sun, we allude to the world of linguistic ambiguities that underpinned a forced integration of different world systems. Signifiers and signified that drift, in dispute.

In a domino effect, the objects refer to one another. A pre-Colombian sculpture makes it possible to imagine a nexus with a papier maché mask made by the artist. An iron sculpture, also made by Hernández, evokes a dinosaur’s skeleton. José de Guimarães’ African Alphabet inspires the shapes of a three-dimensional installation. They are gestures that go beyond the limits of historical fantasy, to become artistic fantasy.