IN-PERSON London Heritages. Section B

Abstract

Heritage sites seem trapped in cultural war zones, under pressure from all sides. Artists are often most perceptive in sensing the deeper undercurrents running through these sites. I propose looking at two contemporary artists – Laura Grace Ford and Minerva Cuevas – who are reassessing the notion of heritage in different ways. Laura Grace Ford is the author of a 2019 collection of zines entitled Savage Messiah. Her work is described in a Guardian review as anarchic: ‘she focuses on areas haunted by an urban dispossessed, which regeneration seeks to concrete over…’ I propose to look at Ford’s current photographic work which certainly reflects the observer who created those zines but also amplifies the view to encompass social lives, friends, urban sites that both alienate and stir affection. Heritage is a continuous undercurrent in this ongoing work though never articulated in words and never approached as a fixe point of orthodoxy. I would also look at the recent work of Minerva Cuevas, a Mexican artist who has created long friezes re-presenting figures and motifs drawn from the Templo Mayor and the Mexican Museum of Anthropology. In all of these friezes she challenges the heritage principles underlying the preservation of Mayan ruins. For both Ford and Cuevas heritage is not seen necessarily as a beneficial act of preservation and the histories preserved are still to be contested. Rather they suggest heritage is a living, fluid entity always in a process of creation.