“The Keys of the City”  was an action that consisted in inviting the participation of Antonio Hernandez, an artisan who worked on the main street in Ciudad Juárez, just a few steps away from the border crossing with El Paso, Texas. His work consisted in making keys for tourists. With the destruction of the commercial area of the city’s historical center, the lack of tourists and the constant extortions, Antonio has to move from the place where he had been working over the past 40 years and attempt to sell his work on the opposite side of the border.

In Dublin Contemporary 2011, over the course of 5 days, Antonio discussed his vision of the realities of the city and the reasons why he had to stop working there. While he told his story, he engraved keys with a word requested by his audience, he asked: “what do you think about what is happening in my country?”. The keys were then suspended from a metal wire, thus forming a poem with all of the words inscribed and all of the thoughts dictated there.

September 6th – October 31st, 2011