La Madonna

Secreto Rebollo conjured in this wall a powerful image that transports us to the mother figure, to a maternal embrace. In Mexico, devotion to the mother is linked to the adoration of the Virgin of Guadalupe, considered the protector of the most vulnerable. This mother-Virgin who gives comfort and protection is almost considered a patriotic symbol. As writer Octavio Paz wrote in The Labyrinth of Solitude: "Guadalupe is pure receptivity and the benefits she produces are of the same order: she consoles, serenades, quiets, wipes away tears, calms passions". In this socio-cultural context, Secreto captured an intimate and contemporary vision of the protective mother, inspired by his own family. In this particular site, the artists were given the directive to address the theme of "childhood" because the murals on the facades of this housing complex were part of a plan to rehabilitate the space to make it a cleaner, more familiar and safer place where children could play. For Secreto it was important to find the right message. "I didn't want to illustrate the word [childhood] or block its reading with symbolism and far-fetched metaphors," he says. He also wanted to combine the theme with his ongoing series titled Beliefs, his production at the time, in which he researched religious references and used them as metaphors for current life situations. With that in mind, he decided to make an interpretation of the Italian paintings of Madonnas with the baby Jesus, one of the most recurrent themes of the Renaissance. "I was sketching ideas until I looked into the room and saw my son hugging his mother. The scene reminded me of the baroque paintings of the Madonna but I noticed something special: Teresa did care about her son, she covered him with her arms, she protected him. It was not like some works of art where there is an indifference, a certain disconnection between mother and son. I took that theme as a reference but with a more human approach," he explains. Once the concept was defined, he looked for the most appropriate aesthetics: "the composition and range were thought out so that they would not go out of context. Thinking of Mexico, where it is common to see religious figures on street corners, [I looked for] an image with similar characteristics that would blend in with the space, that way I wouldn't force anyone to turn around because of the stridency, I wanted the attraction to be natural," he explains.