This site-specific installation by Colombian artist and engineer Miler Lagos is made of cardboard boxes collected on Duke’s campus, stacked and carved to resemble the base of a Ceiba tree—an ancient and sacred symbol in Mesoamerican and Amazonian cultures. By reshaping discarded cardboard to its pre-processed arboreal form, Lagos confronts viewers with the hidden cost of commerce.

With the title, Merx, Latin for “merchandise” and derived from the Roman god Mercury (patron of commerce and communication/divination), Lagos imbues his work with a multi-leveled significance. The reclaimed cardboard evokes global systems of trade and transformation. And the Cieba tree connects the shamanic practice of bridging realms by inserting tobacco leaves into its bark to Duke’s historical entanglement with tobacco as a commodity. In this context, The Merx Tree becomes both a reflection of the global impact of distribution, and a monument to the invisible, often spiritual, networks embedded within it.

The Merx Tree is sponsored by Duke Arts, Office of Climate and Sustainability, Art, Art History and Visual Studies, Center for Documentary Studies (CDS), Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS)

About Miler Lagos

Miler Lagos’ practice has as starting points dialogue and experimentation with materials, which manifest as catalyst for the central issues of his discourse.

He reflects on the relationship between images and objects, content, and container. Wood and paper have served as mediums for representing his interest in the intersection of nature and culture. He is profoundly concerned about studying how humans have modeled their space or how environmental and geographic conditions shape human interactions. Lagos intends to raise awareness about environmental conservation by highlighting how we gradually turn nature into a resource, a raw material to be transformed and inhabited, or merely a vehicle of anthropocentric power.

Miler Lagos’s work is in the collections of MUAC Museo de Arte de la Universidad Autónoma de México, Harvard University, the Bank of the Republic of Colombia, the Rubell Family Collection, and the CIFO Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, among others.

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