Pedro Reyes
Born in Mexico City, 1972
Lives and works in Mexico City.
Pedro Reyes is a sculptor whose academic training is in architecture. His work, which integrates elements of theater, psychology and activism, takes forms as diverse as habitable sculptures (Capulas, 2002-08) or marionettes (Baby Marx, 2008), (La Revolución Permanente, 2014), (Manufacturing Mischief, 2018). In 2008, Reyes started the project Palas por Pistolas (Shovels For Guns), in which 1,527 firearms were donated to be converted into shovels with which 1,527 trees were planted. This project led to Disarm (2012), in which 6,700 destroyed weapons have been turned into various musical instruments. In 2011, he started Sanatorium, a temporary clinic that offers short and heterodox treatments that combine art and psychology. Originally commissioned by the Guggenheim Museum in New York, Sanatorium has been held at Documenta 13, Kassel (2012), Whitechapel Gallery, London (2013), The Power Plant, Toronto (2014), the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) Miami (2014-2015), and OCA, Sao Paulo (2015).
In 2013, Reyes presented the first edition of pUN: The People’s United Nations at the Queens Museum in New York. pUN is an experimental congress in which ordinary citizens serve as delegates from each of the countries to the United Nations, seeking to apply techniques and resources from social psychology, theater, the arts, and conflict resolution to geopolitics. The second edition of pUN was held at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles (2015). The third General Assembly of pUN took place in December 2015 at the Museum of the 21st century in Kanazawa, Japan. In 2015 he received the Medal of Arts from the United States Department of State, as well as a Fellowship from the Ford Foundation. In late 2016, he presented Doomocracy, an immersive play commissioned by Creative Time at the Brooklyn Army Terminal in NY. That same year, he was Visiting Scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ACT, and was the inaugural artist for the Dasha Zhukova Distinguished Visiting Artist program at MIT CAST. In addition to his artistic practice, Pedro Reyes has curated numerous exhibitions and often contributes to art and architecture publications.
Reyes’ works can be found in the following public collections: 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia; The Bass, Miami, USA; Brooklyn Museum, New York, USA; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, USA; CIAC AC, Mexico City, Mexico; Colección Jumex, Mexico City, Mexico; De La Cruz Collection, Miami, USA; Funación Alumnos 47, Mexico City, Mexico; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, USA; Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco, USA; MAXXI, Rome, Italy; Museo Amparo, Puebla, Mexico; Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo MUAC, Mexico City, Mexico; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, USA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, USA; Museo Tamayo de Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City, Mexico; Perez Art Museum, Miami, USA; Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA; among others.
