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The Art That Made Mexico: Paradise, Power and Prayers

Documentaries

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media: Arts

Alinka Echeverria explores the three major forces that have shaped Mexican art.

Artist Alinka Echeverria explores the three major forces - nature, power and faith - that have shaped Mexican art, and Mexico itself.

BBC Four

Alinka Echeverria

Graeme Hart

Alessandra Bonomolo

The Art That Made Mexico: Paradise, Power and Prayers: Series 1: Episode 3: Prayer

Prayer

Episode 3

Episode 3: Prayer

Series 1

BBC Four - The Art That Made Mexico: Paradise, Power and Prayers, Series 1, Prayer

How the need for a visual image created a unique blend of Mesoamerican and Catholic faith.

Alinka Echeverria explores how believers' need for visual images caused artists to create a unique hybrid of Mesoamerican and Catholic faith in Mexico.

In this final episode, Alinka explores how faith has always driven life in Mexico, and how the need for a visual image created a unique blend of Mesoamerican and Catholic faith.

Artists were kept close to the elites in Mexico's ancient civilisations to depict the deities that were the foundations of the society's structures and beliefs. Gods and goddesses were created in the mind's eye of millions, who in turn worshipped the imagery that the artists provided.

When the Spanish imposed Catholicism, the notion of venerating the divine using iconography already existed. And in some of Mexico's most spectacular art, iconography incorporating both Mesoamerican and Catholic belief can be found. This unique hybridity could only exist in Mexico, where art has long been crucial to the personal relationship between believer and the divine. Ex-votos paintings are offerings of thanks to saints and expressions of devotion. They have long been the preserve of poor and rural Mexicans, and depict very personal situations.

Today, one artist is pushing the boundaries of belief, incorporating symbols of secular culture and consumerism with religious iconography. Even as the power of the church wains in Mexico, religious imagery can still be found everywhere.

The Art That Made Mexico: Paradise, Power and Prayers: Series 1

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Alinka Echeverria explores the forces and ideas that have shaped Mexico and its art.

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The Art That Made Mexico: Paradise, Power and Prayers

Series 1

Episode 3: Prayer

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