Pedro Reyes is an ingenious artist, the kind we love here at the CFC. Building off his project from 2008, Palas por Pistolas (1527 guns and weapons were melted down and fashioned into shovels that were then used to plant 1527 trees), he hits us with Imagine. Apparently the Mexican government caught wind of his projects and offered him all the metal from a public destruction of weapons they were having in Juarez. He took them up on their offer and this time took to turning instruments of death and violence into instruments of…musical.

“It’s important to consider that many lives were taken with these weapons; as if a sort of exorcism was taking place the music expelled the demons they held, as well as being a requiem for lives lost.”

Video, photos, quotes…

“There is a disparity between visible and invisible violence. The nearly 80,000 deaths by gun-shot that have occurred in Mexico in the last 6 years, or the school shootings in the US are the visible side of violence. The invisible side is that one of gun trade-shows, neglecting assault rifle bans, and shareholder profit from public companies. This is a large industry of death and suffering for which no cultural rejection is expressed.Guns continue to be depicted as something sexy both in Hollywood and in videogames”