Originally a cultural import from Mexico, the piñata has become a standard party
game at children's birthday celebrations in the United States. Proof of its popularity: YouTube is full
of embarrassing piñata bloopers, painful mishaps that occur as a blindfolded child holding a stick tries
to crack open a paper maché animal dangling from a string. The history of this candy-filled object,
however, goes much further back than Mexico and is connected with religious rites and rituals. One artist
who has explored the anthropological origins of the piñata is Meg Cranston. Her
series Magical Death (2002/2003) consists of life-sized self-portraits of the artist
as a piñata. The elaborate figures strike a variety of poses and wear a range of outfits from ordinary
street clothes to an elaborate headdress. Taken from a 1973 documentary film about native Brazilian
people, the title suggests something more sinister and ancient than a simple party game and refers to
the tribe's ritual of creating effigies of their enemies and destroying them.
Created
together with Cranston's students, her piñatas have something masochistic about them, and she seems
to be challenging the cult of the artist persona with a fragile image of the self. At the same time,
Magical Death seems to invoke another power. With origins in ancient China and the Near East, the piñata
also had transformative significance. Ceramic animals containing seeds were smashed over fields to ensure
a good crop in China and in the Near East a similar ritual was associated with the god Attis. These
traditions were transposed into Christian doctrine with a piñata in the form of a seven-pointed star
representing the seven deadly sins that needed to be destroyed by "blind" faith. Cranston's
piñatas seem to operate on all these levels — evoking notions of self-destruction, purging and transformation.
Considering the possibility of the candy within, the transformative message of the works seems closest
at hand. Then again, this idea remains purely conceptual and even slightly cynical, given that no exhibition
visitor is likely to dare a whack at an individual or a work of art.
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Link:
http://www.uniteddivas.com/megcranston/megbio.html
