The figure of tlacuiloon the prehispanic culture, represents the painter, writer and librarian. It is for this reason that the artist Peter Reyes he considered it to be the name for his public library, where he not only lends his personal collection of rare books, but also works of art and vinyl.
In 2019 Reyes started this project, after realizing that several libraries in Mexico do not make home loans, an idea that he considers goes against the nature of these spaces. “It’s an absurd idea because a library that doesn’t lend books is a prison for books,” he says in an interview with THE UNIVERSAL.
His disagreement was made known to a librarian, who asked him if he would really be willing to lend his books. “I felt that if I was going to require libraries to lend, then I had to start by doing the same thing,” he says.
Tlacuilo, Museo Marco, 2022. Photo: Courtesy Museo Marco/ Pedro Reyes
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With Tlacuilo, the artist and his team seek to revive the loan culture. In this library, whose main headquarters is the artist’s residence where he stores 25,000 books, there is no fee or subscription to pay, but a simple registration that can be done through its Tlacuilo application for mobile devices.
Contact can also be made through the Instagram account (@tlacuilobiblioteca). The user and the library coordinate the delivery of the book, which will be loaned for a period of three months, longer than is customary in other libraries.
Lending something as intimate as his personal library, without any guarantee on the part of the user, does not worry the artist, since he explains that the community that has been created -of approximately 500 users- complies with the loan periods and that at most it has had to extend it in some cases.
“We are proposing a model that goes from being owners of things to being custodians of them. By sharing, learning possibilities are multiplied and you feel less alone”, he declares about the experience in Tlacuilo.
Tlacuilo has archives such as that of the recently deceased museographer Miguel Angel FernandezFrom the writer René Aviles Fabila -which is full of jewels of Mexican literature with first editions and almost the complete bibliography of Mexican writers of the 20th century-, and the sculptor Luis Ortiz Monastery. He also manages books in several languages, such as French, English, Japanese, German and has a large section on indigenous languages, explains the sculptor.
Tlacuilo, Museo Marco, 2022. Photo: Courtesy Museo Marco/ Pedro Reyes
The project has been extended to the reactivation of other locations, such as two ISSSTE libraries, one in the San Miguel Chapultepec neighborhood and another in the Tlatelolco Housing Unit, and the Nancarrow-O’gorman library. Another is located in the Carrillo Gil Art Museum and the Monterrey Museum of Contemporary Art (MARCO).
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Loan of works of art? Get to know the first art libraries in Mexico
In 2021, Pedro Reyes managed to get the Carrillo Gil Art Museum to lend its documentation center at home. But he also made this space become the first artoteca in Mexico, that is, a library that lends works of art.
At this headquarters in Tlacuilo, a series of photographs, drawings, paintings, prints, and posters can be borrowed for three months.
Tlacuilo, Museo Marco, 2022. Photo: Courtesy Museo Marco/ Pedro Reyes
“It is a very nice experience to go to the museum and be able to take a work of art with you and have that intimate experience of seeing it. The incorporation of art into the loan system had not been done in Mexico”, affirms the artist.
Tlacuilo has not been limited to museums in Mexico City, since MARCO in Monterrey – where Pedro Reyes exhibits until August – lends his books that specialize in Mexican contemporary art and his vinyl records that are live voice, that is, sound recordings of poets reading their texts.
Although Reyes assures that at the moment they do not intend to grow more, but rather to improve their service, he confesses that he does consider making a satellite branch of his library, since he hardly has space in his house for more books. He also explains that he has approached the National Library Network “with the intention that the app can be used as a lending system for other libraries as well,” he says.
Tlacuilo MACG, 2021. Photo: Fiona Tommasi / Pedro Reyes
Boosting libraries in the digital age
Buying books online and reading them in electronic versions is already a common practice. However, Pedro Reyes does not consider that the new forms of reading are in competition with the culture of libraries and the printed book.
“I am of the belief that new ideas are hidden in old books. There is the idea that everything is on the internet and nothing could be further from reality”, says the artist.
The artist considers that libraries are a source of information that is not easily found online and for that same reason he advocates changing the lending culture in Mexico, and freeing books for circulation.
“Mexican librarians are very nagging, so I think we need to improve the culture of libraries, we have to make them less solemn and more alive,” he concludes.
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