¿QUE TE MUEVE?

I grew up in a small town, near a forest and a lake. Most of the time we walked to school, friends house and the market, life was slow and streets remained narrow for horses and donkeys. It was hard for cars to move and circulate the streets.
To continue studying I went to the city, where I spent hours and hours, days, weeks and a couple of years in the traffic of one of the largest cities in the world. We all want to avoid rush hour, but in Mexico city it is practically impossible, very often the endless caravan of cars becomes annoying, drivers turn impatient and you seldom hear the traditional mexican ti ti ti ti TI ti.
At the end of the 90’s I studied BA in Economics. To get to the university, it took by car, a few hours in the morning and another couple of hours in the evening. I came back home to sleep before returning to the eternal TRAFFIC.
Day and night I returned to traffic, traffic and more traffic. I did not understand what I was doing alone in a car for so long. I thought of my child town, the forest and what I was studying: Economic theories; consumption behavior of goods and services; consumption and more consumption, cars and more cars and more cars … The idea of world ​​economic growth, and the relationship between natural resources consumption and birth rate grouth… HOW MANY HUMAN BEINGS LIVE IN THE PLANET? and each one of us needs a CAR?…
After some time in traffic my thoughts and feelings for traffic, consumption, birth rate slowly began to change. They became more of a companion and a friend and changed my life. To get distracted, there was lots of time to read and see the bill boards. I imagined the adds had images and pictures of nature, trees, flowers, elephants, lakes and sea …
While driving I began to take pictures of what I was living, I captured the endless rivers of cars and road adds, I took pictures of what thousands and thousands of people lived daily in their cars.
One add in particular called my attention, it said: WHAT MOVES YOU? What moves you ? this add was all over the city …What moves you ? besides thinking about the car that moved me, I remembered when young my inclination for painting, my inclination of doing manual things. At the same time there was another add Frida Kahlo´s life movie (Played by Actress Salma Hayek) also all around Mexico City and ERASE UNA VEZ IN MEXICO. What MOVES ME is ART and expressing myself through my hands, expressing myself through photography, sculpture, painting, etc. . There in TRAFIC, I discovered an began my adventure in art. Traffic and the number of cars was no longer an anguish, it helped me understand what we are as human beings, what we need and what each one of us can do to change. Traffic was my teacher it allowed me to decide and return to nature. Today my art work is inspired by nature and after 20 years, nature keeps on helping me understand my self as a human being.
Therefore, this photo series WHAT MOVES YOU? Could help and allow us to remember what we want as human beings and where are we going as individuals. What moves us? and what is our mission within the automobile river of life.
Inspired by Ines Cusi life events.
Written by Gerardo Perez-Verdía