Sangre Boliviana Shrine

When I have shown Sangre Boliviana in a museum or gallery, the computer was integrated as part of a shrine. I was inspired by many of the road-side shrines I had seen in Latin America. In these shrines, there often was the virgin surrounded by an enclosure that looked like a little house, with a peaked roof but without a front. Next to the virgin, there would be flowers or other objects left by passersby asking the virgin for a safe passage.

Allen Noska and Carnita Tumelo, exhibit designers, built the first shrine. Miguel Angel Ramírez and his brothers built the shrine for the LightBox Mágico Exhibit in Cochabamba, Bolivia. The Ramírez brothers are fourth-generation craftsmen that build replicas of colonial style furniture. It is often difficult to tell the real colonial pieces from their replicas.

Miguel Angel and I worked on the design. The brothers covered old wood from a dismantled church pew with colonial designs hammered into a silver and tin alloy.