Mural at MUJAM in Mexico City

Late last year I was invited to do character design for a stop motion co-production Japanese/Mexican animation film, Lucharobomatic. In conjunction with a promotional teaser I painted the two main characters at the MUJAM museum, Trueno Tigre and Furioso Rosa. The idea of the film is that robots are anonymous, only a dozen or so different series and thousands of copies of each model. They are forced start wearing masks to differentiate, so they can wrestle mexican style. The bad guys are the producers of programmed disfunction the ones who force the robots to fight until death. They battle until total destruction of their oponent. They start to develope an identity under the masks and form a resistance to enslavement and programed obsolescence. Matches are held in an old abandoned mambo club, outside an enormous metal face with giant hands holding maracas. From Tokyo to Mexico city robot masked wrestlers are preparing for the throw down. And I am the Roseheaded pink cotton candy haired artist, asked to pose for photos with Mexican children. The story plot is pretty conventional but there are some interesting Twists and Double twists.

Haha, just kidding about the film, but it’s so much more interesting than the real story:

Never having done a mural in such a constricted time frame, and wondering how long would it take? To be super organised and ready for anything, I prepared 10 designs and had them blown up to mural size; bringing my own paints, brushes and Molotov markers, putting the paints in small containers so they could just be thrown out (I ended up leaving them for someone else to use). Arriving at the museum comunication was a little hard, I got the impression that it is difficult for Mexicans to say “no”. So all propositions become tentative with only 9 hours to paint and it taking 2 hours to decide on the location. I finally got approval by Mr. Shimiza and I took off like a rocket.

There is a new exhibit at the MUJAM and I was dying to paint something there! The new Lucha Libre room is great, I love the recycled industrial metal framed window display cases. A portrait gallery of champions, a collection of paintings by luchadora comics artists. All the while working I could hear the echos of children’s cries “mascaras” (masked wrestlers) as they entered the display. Unable to finish that first day, I came back the next day for finishing touches and photos with the staff. Two hours later and we were eating great vegetarian sushi at the museum’s cafe and had enough time to go check out Vertigo gallery and stumble by accident upon Georgetown Records Mexico City, but that’s another story!

There’s an article here when I visisted the MUJAM for the first time. Other articles about toy museums:

https://www.sunnybuick.com/2015/01/brussels-toy-museum/ https://www.sunnybuick.com/2016/08/brussels-toy-museum-part-2/

https://www.sunnybuick.com/2015/01/mexico-part-8-san-miguel-toy-museum/ https://www.sunnybuick.com/2009/08/godzillarobo/