Disarming Art
Pedro Reyes can literally use the term 'disarming' to describe his ambitious projects to reduce the number of guns in circulation. He focuses on the Mexican territories where gun violence is an essential component of its drug-trafficking economy. The urgency of this initiative has been demonstrated in other sites since 2007 when he undertook "Palas por Pistolas". Reyes comments that gun sales soared across the United States after the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut that killed twenty children and six adults. "It is a sadly familiar response ... After each massacre, whether a mass shooting in a Colorado movie theater or the attempted assassination of an Arizona congresswoman that killed several bystanders, Americans have bought guns at a higher pace than they did before the rampage."
With these proofs of the importance of his efforts, he undertook another project, appropriately titled "Disarm".
In this instance, the guns seized by police in Ciudad Juárez were turned into an initiative that targets the dominating U.S.role in gun violence. Reyes transformed the guns into musical instruments: guitars, drums, marimbas and so on. Reyes explains, “I think about Disarm as a form of exorcism, expelling a demon that has overtaken the body. In the United States, demons of war and violence possess the social body. There are 89 guns for every 100 citizens in the United States. The country spends more than the next 13 nations combined on its military. You have to defeat and tame the demon before you can expel it. In the instruments I’ve built from guns, the weaponry appears intact—though, of course, it is no longer functional—so that people still have to deal with this demon.”
People who are killed or wounded by gun shots are not the only victims of this violence that Reyes tracks. Forest ecosystems are often cleared to cultivate the drugs that generate the conditions for violence.