Siqueiros Sonico.

The voice of Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros is once again ringing through the rooms and corridors of a house he donated to the Mexican public shortly before his death 30 years ago.

The Siqueiros Sonico exhibition in the Sala deArte Publico Siqueiros (SAPS)--once the artist's house and workshop--takes the form of a stroll through Siqueiros' life, narrated in his own voice and with his own words.

As you enter the exhibit, you can immediately hear the babble of voices coming from the different rooms. But as soon as you are inside one of them, the clarity of the audio is impeccable.

The four rooms represent four different themes--historic process, artistic theory, anecdotes and experiences, political discourse. Apart from a small glass case displaying some of the artist's personal possessions--note-books, newspaper articles, diplomas--as the visitor enters, there is very little else to see. The rooms are small, giving the impression of intimacy, and equipped only with cushions, speakers and video-installations that mimic the sound waves of Siqueiros' voice.

Each room contains around 10 minutes of audio, taken from original archives comprised of around 60 hours of recordings. In the recordings, Siqueiros--one of the principal proponents of Mexican muralism alongside Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco--talks about his participation in the Mexican Revolution and the Spanish CivilWar, as well as his theory on art and the creation of his murals, his political activism, his time in prison and exile, and his childhood.

The exhibit's curator, Juan Manuel Struck, told BUSINESS MEXICO in an interview this was the first time the sound archives had been comprehensively opened to the public. He said that among the archives and documents Siqueiros donated along with his house, were 53 rolls of audio tape. The exhibit was born when, in order to preserve the tapes from degradation, SAPS decided to digitalize them.

"They (the tapes) are mostly unedited and are an important part of our national culture," Struck said, adding that it took 18 months to prepare the exhibit. Six months were spent restoring and digitalizing the recordings, followed by work on qualification, transcription and organization.

"And we are still cataloging the exact dates and places where the speeches in many of the tapes took place," he said, adding that the majority of the recordings date from the 1950s and 1960s, with a handful from the 1940s and 1970s.

After the more discursive tone of the first two rooms, the third is noticeably more intimate. Siqueiros laughs and jokes, chats about his childhood ... he is in "storytelling" mode.

The contrast is then striking when you enter the last room. It is the only one in surround sound and there is applause accompanying some of the speeches. It is also a rare occasion on which one can hear Siqueiros, a member of the Mexican Communist Party and a Marxist-Stalinist, refer briefly (if obliquely) to a failed attempt on Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky's life.

"I do not agree that a provocateur should be allowed refuge in Mexico. I will do everything in my power to make him leave," he says, accompanied by gunshot sounds.

Trotsky was later killed by an assassin in his home in Mexico City.

Struck said the advantage of the exhibition was that it had appeal for a wide range of people, from art buff to man on the street.

"Through the exhibition, we can get to know better a person who is an important part of the city of Mexico in particular. People are constantly coming up against his work on a daily basis here."

Siqueiros murals can be seen, among other places, in the National History Museum (Chapultepec Castle), the Education Secretariat and the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

"We were enamored of infinite spaces, large places, where our voices
resounded and could really be heard."
--David Siqueiros

Opening hours: Tuesday to Sunday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Exhibition will run until March 2005.

Sala de Arte Publico Siqueiros

Tres Picos #29

Polanco

Mexico D.F.

Tel: [phone] or 5203 5888

www.conaculta.gob.mx/saps