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Monday, November 8, 2010

Can You Dig It?




Finally! Someone has figured out how to out-live a bullet wound thanks to the one and only...shovel!?

Pedro Reyes, hailing from Culiacan, Mexico-which happens to boast the highest rate of gun-related deaths in the country-has figured out how to transform the “agents of death into the seeds of life.”

In his courageous campaign Palas Por Pistolas (“Shovels for Guns”), the Mexican artist collected some fifteen hundred firearms, which he eagerly smashed with a steamroller. Following the guns overtly public demise at the hands of Reyes, they were turned over to a foundry where they were melted and ultimately re-shaped into shovel heads.

Since his public display of hatred towards guns, Reyes has been distributing the shovels to art institutions and schools all over San Francisco, Vancouver, and Paris, where they have found a much different use in their afterlife: planting trees.

Being perceived as someone who has the ability to uncover the positives from the failures of modern society, Reyes seems more like a living deity rather than a omniscient artist. How’s that for a “smoking gun?” Have YOU helped save the world today?

For more information, visit: takepart.com

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