Child Heroes, 2017-2018

Child Heroes is a 2-D animated work that the artist Itzel Martínez carried out through a co-participation process with nine children from Santa María la Ribera, and José Daniel Morales (Joze Daniel), a young illustrator who is also from Santa María. The story and characters were created based on emotional maps of each of the young participants, significant trajectories that are closely linked to their subjectivities and their perception of the adult world. The home, the school, friends, the neighborhood, moments of solitude, the constant questions and fears that powerfully filter the reality of childhood experience were framed in contexts of precariousness, gender inequality, and overwhelming violence as a daily norm.

Tara, the protagonist in Child Heroes, is inspired by a daydreaming child who identifies adults as senseless automatons who are part of a malevolent system that destroys any possibility of well being. Tara recognizes that the system is a beast named Samsara who inhabits the bowels of the city. Samsara feeds on violence at different levels and provokes allergic reactions in the children that make them sick, absorbing their colors and spontaneity, thereby turning them into small gray replicas of the adults.

For both the artist and for José Daniel Morales, art director for the project, it was important to highlight the strategies that children create using their imaginaries to counteract an era that is strongly anchored in an adult-centric perspective. The work refers critically to historical characters that embody “heroism” in State discourse, the same ones who are disseminated through the regulatory structure imposed by the school system.

—Violeta Celis

Curators: Osvaldo Sánchez and Violeta Celis
Final Project: 2-D animation