The project Estas Ruinas Que Ves / These Ruins You See shifts between politics, history, heritage, and identity in an attempt to find, in the present, the vestiges of archaeological practice. The publication contains a collection of found objects and exhumed artifacts, bringing together a number of texts and illustrations—some of them contemporary and others historical—on the history of collections and exhibitions of pre-Cortesian objects, as well as the manufacture of replicas, the shadowy world of forgers, the relocation of key objects, and related themes. The objective of all of this excavation and collecting is to bring into sharp relief the ideological baggage and the range of museographic practices that always and inevitably frame our perception of these objects.
Published on the occasion of Mariana Castillo Deball’s exhibition Estas Ruinas Que Ves / These Ruins You See at the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, November 8, 2006 – February 28, 2007. English / Spanish, 155 × 225 mm, hardcover, cloth binding, 272 pages, 50 color & 120 b/w illustrations, ISBN: 978-1-933128-46-7. Published by Sternberg Press. Out of print.
Pastiche is a typeface designed by Manuel Raeder with Hannes Gloor especially for this project. The typeface is based on early documents from the end of the 19th century, at the start of the archaeological practice in Mexico. The publishers at that time developed a syncretic style mixing ornamental elements from the pre-Columbian cultures together with European typefaces. This mixture is what inspired the typeface, which combines elements from printed fonts, hand written and typewriters. The title of the font, Pastiche, comes from the text of Adam Sellen included in the book, where he refers to the pastiche Zapotec urns, forgeries elaborated based on casts from different pieces, creating a unique fake piece.
