Artist Conveys Message of Peace Through Gun Transformations

Pedro Reyes conveys a powerful message through his art and one doesn’t need a trained eye to see what he uses to create each masterpiece. The Mexican-based artist is a firm believer in using his art as a political statement and as part of his project “Imagine”,he hopes to raise awareness about gun violence. He has taken 6,700 guns confiscated by the government and rendered inoperable from being buried and upcycled them into working musical instruments. He starts out by first laying down all the gun parts on a table and visualizing and shaping how they would all go together. Then working with musicians and technicians, Reyes cuts down and welds the pieces together to create playable electric guitars, violins, flutes, banjos and a variety of percussion instruments. He further wants to bring attention to the availability of guns in the U.S. and its impact to Mexico where many guns are acquired illegally without a license or a permit. He addresses the idea of how the guns he used could have had a violent past and comments via his blog that “It’s important to consider that many lives were taken with these weapons; as if a sort of exorcism was taking place the music expelled the demons they held, as well as being a requiem for lives lost.”