For this important series, the artist borrowed the title from the sixteenth-century text ‘Letters from Mexico’, penned over
seven years by the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés, who led an expedition that resulted in the fall of the Aztec Empire.
Following Cortés’s example, Fujiwara recounts his own experiences in a series of eight letters, addressed to “Europe,” lining
the gallery perimeter. The letters are at first enthusiastic, eventually disintegrating into disenchantment with the country’s
social inequalities. Fujiwara’s letters outline his intentions to write an erotic novel set in Mexico during the bicentennial of the nation’s independence, addressing the country’s sexual revolution, and ultimately concluding with the author’s death.
Letters from Mexico incorporates several objects relating to Mexican heritage and culture that refer to both pre- and post-colonization.
The taxidermied eagle references the Aztec pictogram for Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City)—an eagle holding a serpent,
perched atop a prickly pear cactus—which now appears in the center of the Mexican flag. Fujiwara’s installation is lined with
several meters of green, white, and red curtain; the colors of