The Enduring Signal from Lourdes's buoy

A tribute to Lourdes Grobet, an extraordinary artist, friend and imaginative beacon to dreamers everywhere

“I had an inherent leaning towards politics. It had been in me since I was a young woman. But not in the ‘working for a political party’ way of speaking. My political inclinations were towards working for the needs of people and working in the streets.” – Lourdes Grobet, 2021

Versión en español

Versión publicada en la revista Resiliente Magazine en Ciudad de México

My friend of many years, iconic Mexican artist, photographer and filmmaker Lourdes Grobet, died of pancreatic cancer in July 2022, at 81 years of age. I’ve been thinking about her ever since. Her imaginative light continues to shine brightly for all of us who knew her and/or were touched by her art, but I have struggled for months with how to describe her special gift.

The many posthumous tributes to Lourdes tend to focus on her pathbreaking photography of Mexican wrestlers, the lucha libre, and with good reason. The New York Times reported in their Spanish language obituary:

[A]round 1980 she entered the wrestling arena, camera in hand, convinced that the sport of wrestling was an underexplored part of indigenous Mexican culture.

“I was so surprised by the events,” she told AWARE, a Paris nonprofit that promotes female artists, in a 2021 interview. “And I decided that I would focus a lot of my efforts on wrestling because here I saw what I considered to be the true Mexican culture.”

In another interview, Lourdes spoke about the cultural importance and meaning of the masks of the luchadores.

[T]here is so much history in these wrestling rituals. Masks are a common link in Mexican history, linking the pre-Columbian past to the present, for example the Zapatistas. Playing with and veiling one’s identity was central to my work.

Although I live part time in Mexico and love this amazing country, I did not meet Lourdes until later in her life, and I initially knew nothing about her storied artistic career nor her iconic photography of the luchadores. As a Swiss-Mexican who grew up and was educated primarily in Mexico City, Lourdes had unique insight into Mexican culture. She was a genre-bending, creative tour de force whose brilliantly varied art projects spanned more than five decades and multiple art forms bringing fresh perspectives to what she called “the staleness of tradition” at every turn.

Lourdes became a friend and imaginative sounding board for me at a time when I was obsessed with trying to mount a new political art project in the Arctic. In an incredible irony, she was editing footage for a film she had just shot in the Arctic exploring one of the main themes of my project. She understood me right away, although she was also far ahead of me.

What follows is my story of our offbeat, often hilarious friendship at the far frontiers of artistic imagination.