Las palomas muertas en las calles de la ciudad, aplastadas una y otra vez por los carros, sin la posibilidad siquiera de descomponerse: esta imagen obsesiona a Stefany Blanco Castro. A partir de ella, la artista refleja aspectos de nuestra vida cotidiana y cuestiona la manera en que nos relacionamos con nuestro entorno para construir nuestra realidad.

En la serie El incesante peso del movimiento (2016–2026), Stefany realiza dibujos basados en fotografías de estos animales fusionados con el pavimento. Las imágenes son traducidas mediante la técnica del puntillismo, un método que, de forma deliberada, evoca también al picoteo constante de las palomas. Esta serie forma parte de la exposición actual y funciona como punto de partida conceptual y visual.

Las palomas grises (Columba livia), originarias de Eurasia y el norte de África, llegaron a América durante los procesos de conquista y colonización europea, especialmente a partir del siglo XVI, cuando fueron introducidas por los españoles como una especie doméstica. Con el tiempo, se adaptaron a los asentamientos humanos¹. Hoy habitan entornos urbanos de todo el continente, pese a ser considerada una especie exótica invasora, estrechamente vinculada a la actividad humana, con impacto tanto en la infraestructura urbana como en la salud pública.

En Bogotá, particularmente en las plazas, las palomas ocupan un lugar profundamente ambivalente: por un lado, son percibidas como plaga —con todas las connotaciones de suciedad, infección, molestia e incluso asco— y, por otro, se han convertido en una presencia cotidiana, casi inevitable, con la que convivimos y, de alguna forma, nos reconocemos. Tal vez nos vemos reflejados en esa coexistencia incómoda entre rechazo y normalización.

Estas palomas funcionan también como un recordatorio vivo de los procesos coloniales: una especie introducida por fuerzas externas que se transforma en una presencia persistente, alterando los ecosistemas que encuentra a su paso. Al mismo tiempo, son cuerpos desorientados, que ya no saben cómo regresar a su origen. Esta condición resulta especialmente irónica si se considera que, históricamente, las palomas —en particular las mensajeras— se asocian con una extraordinaria capacidad de orientación y retorno.

Como muchas personas en Bogotá —una ciudad atravesada por altas densidades poblacionales y formas de vida verticalizadas—, Stefany creció viviendo en un apartamento dentro de un conjunto residencial. En estos espacios, los muros delgados, los ruidos constantes y la cercanía inevitable entre cuerpos, evidencian la fragilidad de la privacidad y reproducen una lógica de contención: lugares que, como un palomar, organizan y agrupan sin importar realmente la vida que ocurre en su interior. Esta misma lógica se prolonga a la calle, donde los carros, los autobuses y el sistema de transporte masivo, funcionan como nuevas “cajitas” móviles en las que nos desplazamos a diario. Somos cuerpos contenidos, insertos en ciclos y rutinas que estructuran nuestra existencia.

A partir de esta experiencia cotidiana, la artista establece un paralelo con la manera en que el funcionalismo de Le Corbusier fue adoptado en Latinoamérica: no como una búsqueda del bienestar a través de la optimización del espacio, sino como una lógica de eficiencia, repetición y estandarización que terminó beneficiando principalmente a las empresas constructoras y sus dinámicas de mercado. El historiador argentino Jorge Francisco Liernur señala que la propuesta de Le Corbusier fue malinterpretada en su escala de intervención: mientras el arquitecto planteaba transformaciones urbanas integrales, en Latinoamérica estas ideas se aplicaron de forma fragmentaria, sobre todo en proyectos de vivienda social masiva². De manera similar, el concepto de la “máquina para habitar” fue entendido de forma literal como una estandarización económica, perdiendo su dimensión poética y su preocupación por la calidad de vida. El arquitecto chileno Fernando Pérez Oyarzun advierte que esta lectura favoreció soluciones constructivas repetitivas que priorizaban la rentabilidad por encima de las experiencias humanas³.

En obras como Palomar (2016–2026), se revelan patrones urbanos a partir de vistas aéreas de distintas localidades de Bogotá. Mediante una analogía construida con escalas de grises, la artista introduce otra capa de lectura: la manera en que las ciudades jerarquizan territorios y valores. Esta organización espacial puede leerse, en un sentido metafórico, como una manifestación simbólica de fenómenos sociales más amplios, como el racismo o las jerarquías implícitas en la planeación urbana.

A partir de estas imágenes de reproducción masiva, Stefany construye palomas mediante técnicas modulares o kusudamas, una práctica de origen japonés que consiste en realizar figuras modulares, es decir, usando varias piezas de papel. Esta elección técnica dialoga nuevamente con la lógica del funcionalismo y la repetición estructural.

Al disponer las palomas a lo largo de un pasillo expositivo, se genera una experiencia corporal directa: el espectador atraviesa el espacio con una sensación similar a la que produce un grupo de palomas al volar cerca —una mezcla de ansiedad, rechazo, sorpresa e interrupción de la rutina.

Otro elemento clave es que no todas las palomas presentan el mismo tono: algunas parecen más blancas que otras. Esta variación responde a la proporción de concreto frente a vegetación en las imágenes originales. Las palomas más claras corresponden a zonas más urbanizadas; las más oscuras, a áreas con mayor presencia vegetal. A partir de esta relación cromática, la obra articula una pregunta incómoda: ¿por qué culturalmente asociamos lo blanco con lo limpio, lo moderno o lo deseable, y lo oscuro —o lo vegetal— con aquello que se percibe como marginal, atrasado o indeseado? Invertir y cuestionar estas asociaciones es uno de los gestos críticos que la artista plantea al espectador con sutileza y rigor.

Con diferentes intensidades, todos desarrollamos mecanismos de orden —nombrar, clasificar, diagnosticar, medir, estructurar— que nos permiten habitar el mundo. En el caso de Stefany, la repetición y la necesidad de cuantificar y medir el tiempo no solo operan como metodología de trabajo, sino también como una forma de seguridad y control frente a un entorno que, sin estas estructuras, resulta inabarcable. Aunque estas “cajitas” puedan parecer limitantes, también ofrecen estabilidad. Por ello, su obra no se plantea como una crítica moral ni como un señalamiento directo, sino como una reflexión abierta sobre quiénes somos y cómo nos organizamos. Inevitablemente, nos plantea preguntas sobre si es posible salir de esos límites y repensar nuestro entorno espacial, físico o simbólico.

¹ Sobre la introducción de Columba livia en América y su adaptación a entornos urbanos, véase Johnston, R. F., y Janiga, M. Feral Pigeons. Oxford University Press, 1995.

² Liernur, Jorge Francisco. Arquitectura en la Argentina del siglo XX: la construcción de la modernidad. Buenos Aires: Fondo Nacional de las Artes, 2001.

³ Pérez Oyarzun, Fernando, y Torrent, Horacio, eds. «Le Corbusier y Sudamérica: viajes y proyectos». ARQ, n.º 45 (2000): 10–12. Véase también Le Corbusier y el sur de América. Catálogo MAC, Universidad de Chile, 2016.

I prepared this talk under the subtitle “Processes and Obsessions.” Many of my recurring obsessions are tightly bound to the body of work I have developed over the past fifteen years. I trained in graphic arts, but painting has become my primary practice; I love painting and I remain deeply engaged with contemporary Mexican and Latin American painting. I am particularly interested in how painting can intersect with historical themes and enter into dialogue with other disciplines such as film and literature. Over time I have developed a methodology: a set of processes that link pictorial concerns to larger historical and cultural questions. I will reveal parts of those processes as we go, but you should know that the painting I am showing today belongs to my most recent series, Los Cachorros (The Cubs), which I will discuss at the end.

To begin: one of my sustained sources is historical imagery. In 2015 I was invited to Querétaro to develop a project called the Museum of the Conspirators, a museum conceived as a series of murals recounting the conspiracies in Querétaro that led to Mexican independence. Researching that project took me back to images of the French Revolution and the Enlightenment—images that influenced Latin American political thought—and it was there that I encountered an engraving by the English printmaker James Gillray that profoundly affected me. The image, roughly titled “A Small Parisian Dinner,” depicts an allegorical figure of the nation consuming its own children: a woman appears to be preparing or eating a child while the Phrygian cap and cockade signal the homeland. For Gillray, the allegory suggested that the nation, in the name of itself, could devour its children more destructively than monarchies. This violent metaphor stayed with me and became a conceptual seed for a series I later called Country of Offerings.

In Country of Offerings I translated that allegory into a Mexican context. I researched the Bracero era of the 1940s—the bilateral program that sent large numbers of Mexican laborers to the United States to work the fields—and the image of offering came back to me: the idea that a country might present its people on a platter. In my translation the “platter” becomes a pozole bowl. That metaphor for offering and loss resonated with contemporary violences in Mexico—migration, structural violence, and the particular anxieties of the Calderón years—and these historical investigations entered my pictorial language.

Earlier in my work I made a series of self-portraits called Pig Me and the Pink World of Consumption. Those paintings came out of daily walks past the meat market of San Rafael on my way to university. I was reading social theory—García Canclini, Foucault—and negotiating my embodied experience, including tensions about my homosexuality and its social reception. The market imagery—meat, flesh, butchery—operated as a mirror: a scenographic frame in which flesh, vulnerability, and the social production of desire could be staged. Gradually the scenographic aspect—the props, the setting—became central; I was trying to capture not only figures and flesh but the context that shapes those bodies.

Another recurring reference has been Caravaggio’s St. Thomas—the tactile operation of a finger probing a wound. I am less interested in literal penetration than in the pictorial device: that small, tactile gesture that reveals what lies beneath the surface. I pursue that tactile logic in my figurative painting, as a kind of diagnostic touch. Two works from my Fires series (created in 2019, just before the pandemic) exemplify this approach. Fires was inspired by Agustín Yáñez’s The Edge of Water and its section on the “fires”—domestic altars filled with candles and flowers in central Mexican Holy Week traditions. I was also reading Georges Didi-Huberman’s reflections on ash: the idea that images survive as ash while many are erased, burned, or lost to time. That palimpsest logic informs the formal treatment in the Fires paintings: the canvas sometimes seems to erase itself, as though the paint smolders or bleeds, registering both presence and historical loss. These works combine the wound and the tactile—if you “penetrate” the canvas you sense a kind of bleeding rendered by paint.

I received a FONCA grant in 2020. One of my mentors, Yishai Jusidman, observed that my paintings suggested caves—not because of a literal cave-like process, nor simply because I sometimes work with fingers, but because the gesture in the painting evokes a primordial kind of touch. That remark resonated and helped me articulate the tactile quality I pursue.

I have also been developing a film-related project for several years under the title A Place Without Limits, which investigates Mexican films of the 1970s in dialogue with contemporary painting. For example, I referenced Arturo Ripstein’s Life Sentence in some of my work. Cinema has become an active interlocutor for me: the staging of time, the cut, and the cinematic gesture are operations I attempt to translate pictorially.

My work often stages violent or tense images that are nevertheless visually compelling. There is frequently an erotic charge in that tension—not necessarily explicit nudity, but an eroticism that arises from touch and tactile relation. Sometimes a pink stain becomes, through a pictorial operation, a hand embracing a figure; marks metamorphose into gestures. The erotic in my paintings is frequently insinuated through texture and sensation rather than overt exposure. I have produced still lifes—kitchen scenes of dead animals, feathers, and fur—that provoke an oddly sensual impression. It fascinates me how humans have used aesthetic images to translate and reflect on terrible historical moments; that capacity to aestheticize horror while producing a complex visual pleasure is a process I explore in my painting.

Collage is central to my process. Many paintings originate as analog collages that I then translate into paint. This allows me to combine diverse references and create pictorial disruptions: furniture that sprouts limbs, objects that become erotic agents, domestic props that eroticize or violate bodies. For example, at Zona Maco, with CAM Gallery, I presented two works in which a male figure is both eroticizing and being eroticized by his environment. Limbs and appendages emerge from armchairs and desks; objects themselves become ambiguous actors. That piece came from an analog collage origin and shows my practice’s reliance on montage and scenographic composition.

I also made a series of still lifes and a work featuring a deer because I am fascinated by the visual sensation of eroticization produced by fur or feathers—how images of dead animals in kitchen still lifes can summon a visual erotics. These explorations culminated in a translation toward collage, cartoons, and a pictorial idea that bodily experience is always mediated by the body’s sensorial capacity: experience is tactile, sensory, erotic in itself.

The most recent body of work I want to discuss is Los Cachorros (The Cubs). This series was sparked by the 1973 film The Cubs, adapted from Mario Vargas Llosa’s novel, which contains a gruesome scene: a boy assaulted and castrated by a dog that escapes its cage and attacks him in a school bathroom and locker room. Because the scene is morbid, I could not deploy my usual frames and analog collage strategies in the same way. Instead I returned to historical research, looking for precedents in painting that dealt with castration. I found surprisingly few references in contemporary and non-Western painting; where the theme appears it often carries a medieval sensibility. That informed the aesthetic of Los Cachorros: the puppylike figures are tinged with medieval forms, suspended in a space of suggestion. In these paintings you almost never see the castration itself; the work emphasizes the displacement of limbs and a bodily ambiguity rather than an explicit act. The result is a pictorial mystery—a suspended, enigmatic scene that registers threat without illustration.

Cinematic strategies are deeply woven into this series. Many of the disconcerting limbs I painted were borrowed from filmic reference: gestures like a hand passing in front of a sleeping character—images that recall Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel. I’m intensely interested in how painting can perform operations analogous to cinema: the illusion of movement, the staging of a touch, the sequencing of visual events within a single frame. Those cinematic operations allow painting to enact montage, suspense, and a theatrical logic.

Curatorial collaboration with my friend Víctor Esquivel was pivotal during Los Cachorros. Víctor and I read widely on the notion of delirium and realized that the images in this series felt less like dreams and more like delusions or reveries—strange, theatrical sequences that function as a theater of masks. Octavio García’s text The Labyrinth Between Delirium and Dream was especially important; it articulates how delirium and dreams can operate as masked theater. That theatrical reading explains my repeated use of curtains in the paintings: curtains both conceal and reveal; they stage the possibility that what is shown is masking something else, and they allow other elements to emerge.

Over time the male figures in Los Cachorros began to shift. The earlier figures were more passive—lying down, vulnerable—whereas later figures develop more agency: they defend themselves, they enact autonomy, even as limbs continue to intrude and disrupt. Theater entered my life through my partner, the actor Fabián Barona, who has taken me to many theatrical productions over the last three and a half years. That exposure influenced my palette and stage logic—mustard tones, planar stage-like spaces—and deepened my interest in painting as a theatrical set. I began to see paintings as stage sets in which something else is happening inside the frame.

I have also allowed my practice to absorb diverse influences: Víctor introduced me to fashion texts, to medical texts, to materials that informed my thinking about castration as both a symbolic and a medicalized procedure. Considering castration through a medical lens—Western medicine’s anatomy of parts—opened another dimension: how the body is read as a set of parts and how that reading intersects with historical practices. I accept these varied inputs because they enrich the work and expand the set of operations I can deploy.

There are moments when I resist stabilizing into a single aesthetic factory. I refuse the idea that an artist must marry oneself to a single identifying mode. That tension—between repeating themes and resisting stagnation—has kept my work restless. I return to the same concerns repeatedly, but from different influences: literature, film, philosophy, fashion, medicine. I see my practice less as cyclical repetition and more as a spiral: returning to the past yields new perspectives and suggests future possibilities. Contemporary painting can return to its own chronology to discover something unforeseen.

For Los Cachorros I deliberately developed an internal symbology. Many works feature tanned male bodies—references for these figures sometimes come from 1980s porn imagery, a source that informed the aesthetic without being a focus for discussion now. These bodies lie on tables, in rooms, or on beds; limbs then disturb the anatomy, violating and eroticizing the body simultaneously. This ambiguity—violation and eroticization—was central. Some limbs are directly inspired by cinematic moments: the hand passing in front of a sleeping person, the disconcerting cut that transforms a scene. Those filmic gestures allowed me to create paintings that feel like a single cinematic frame charged with time and tension.

In the later phases of the series a more theatrical posture emerges. I was reading delirium and theatrical texts with Víctor, and another friend-curator, Víctor Esquivel, suggested thinking of these images as theatrical masks. The curtain became an important device: as soon as a curtain appears, it implies a hidden event. The mustard-colored planes function like stage walls; the scene reads like a set designed for something to occur.

Recently I have become interested in choral figures—women’s choirs—that appear in some recent paintings. I encountered a work by Alberti, The Massacre of the Innocents, while in Berlin at a museum exhibiting the Odessa collection. The biblical scene—Herod’s order to kill children under three—resonated with my long-standing preoccupation with images of violence. Details of choruses in those classical scenes surfaced in my work as premonitory figures; my curator, Tania Ragasol, suggested that these choirs seem to be announcing something. That sense of premonition is compelling: the choruses feel like a heralding, a presence that carries both lament and prophecy.

For the exhibition “Painting Is Also a Song” at CAM Gallery I included several of these motifs and created a mural to house ceramic pieces. That installation underscores an important point for me: painting does not only operate on a canvas; it operates in space. I am increasingly interested in painting as spatial practice—how an image can inhabit a room, interact with objects, and function as part of an environment rather than as an isolated picture.

Finally, the global context has altered my sense of tactility and presence. After 2019 and the period of isolation, I find myself valuing tactile experiences more intensely. The work now negotiates global violences—wars, displacement—and asks how painting can register or transmute those conditions without simply becoming illustration. A collection, for instance, need not portray the immediate spectacle of war in Ukraine to feel the same biblical resonance present in older narratives. Instead, the work aims to refract contemporary violences through pictorial operations: synthesis, cartooning, tactile intensities, and theatrical staging.

In short, my practice returns to a set of operations again and again—the tactile gesture, theatrical staging, erotic/violent tension—applied across historical, cinematic, and literary references. Each repetition is not mere recycling but a return that uncovers new angles, new pictorial possibilities. Painting, for me, is a medium that can reveal by touching its own wounds, by staging a scene that both conceals and announces, and by becoming a device through which the past illumines the present and the present reconfigures the past.

That is all I wanted to share. Thank you.

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For this talk, I decided to structure it based on a very early piece from a very early installation in my career from 2002, with which I carried out my FONCA Young Creators project. By analyzing and addressing this first installation, which in many ways is seminal in my work, I can make a kind of link with my most recent project. In that early work, I inaugurated many of the themes that I continue to address to this day.

I recently presented this most recent project, titled Body Snatchers, at the Museum of the City of Querétaro from August to October of this year, with a brilliant curatorship by Jamila Castañeda.

So, what I do, as I was saying, is to make this relationship between the early project from 2002 and this very recent project, the most recent one I have, which continues to occupy me to this day. In Body Snatchers, I address many of the same themes that run through almost my entire career. These are themes that have to do with the concept of memory in a very broad sense. They have to do with structural analysis, and also with identity constructions, both collective and individual.

Another topic that interests me a lot is the history of the sign, the history of the footprint, the trace in urban visual culture. It is a topic that also deeply interests me, that I continue to work on, and that I address in this recent Body Snatchers project.

This project, as I mentioned, consisted of 11 sculptures in bronze and aluminum, two silkscreen pieces, three archive tables, and a direct intervention on the wall—the stain we see on its left side in this view of the room.

In general, all my work for at least the last 25 years deals with these issues. Now I am at a point in my career that I am really enjoying; after 36 years, I am doing a sort of review of my early projects and making a link with my very recent projects. Somehow, I am finally completing a structure, a body of work that is starting to acquire a complete form. I am noticing that many of these issues I started dealing with 25 years ago are still present, but with very different outcomes. So for me, at this moment, it is very interesting to be analyzing and observing these structures within my own universe.

This is how I structured the Body Snatchers project. Basically, it is about addressing two lines of research. On one hand, I am putting together a database on commemorative monuments in Mexico City, especially in the form of sculpted busts. For me, the bust is exactly the equivalent of a portrait in painting; it is the format in which the sculptor makes a portrait. Just as the painter crops the human body at the torso, we only see the torso and the head. Well, exactly like that, the sculptor tackles portraiture in the bust.

So, the format of the bust interests me because of its ability to portray a character. That is how I approach monuments. I look for commemorative items that I find in Mexico City, and I am enriching this archive with historical, theoretical, and conceptual research, and above all, a photographic record through walks and tours I take in the city. This context has always been central to my work; it is always a central element from which I start to gather information that I will then process and express in different ways.

So, on one hand, there is this research on monuments. On the other hand, there is research I do on the history of graphic elements—understood as stains, drawings, strokes, graffiti, texts, words that I find in urban space and that appear in urban visual culture, which also has a lot to do with popular culture in a broad sense. I nurture this archive not only through these records of urban graphics but also through the analysis of music, which is a very important resource within my work, as well as manga, for example. In short, there are many sources, and of course, also Art History, which is always a constant source from which I draw inspiration and enrich my work. I am constantly reviewing images from art history.

With all these archives, including this graphics archive from Mexico City, I develop a series of characters. For example, there is a character that is always constant in these graphics: the figure of the clown. The clown is an archetype with a very open meaning, a container of concepts that constantly appears in this popular culture.

I process these images through various means. The first thing I do is draw them again in notebooks, then I make photomontages, and finally, I do digital modeling. After digitally modeling these images, I make 3D prints and then transfer these digital prints to cast bronze or aluminum. I am combining very current technology with very ancient technologies that come directly from the Bronze Age, such as bronze casting. Virtually nothing has changed. I am also very interested in this topic of combining very old technologies with very recent ones.

The basic operation for this project is very simple and immediate. After portraying these commemorative busts, I combine them. I put them in a kind of collision with the graphics files. For me, the archive of monuments has to do with the official, national mnemonic construction, with a monumental character which also has a character of imposition. I combine it with this other file that has to do with these graphics, which has a more unofficial, individual character, and in many ways, contrasts with this monumental character. It has more to do with the fragment, with the detritus, with the trivial, with what goes unnoticed.

So, I put these two files into collision through a very simple operation: these photomontages that come from collage. Much of my work is nourished through collage and photomontage above all. To create these characters that make up the body of Body Snatchers, what I do is choose some of these busts. I keep the torso and make a selection of these characters from the graphic archive that are already heavily modified by the processes I mentioned—drawing and photomontage. I make this superimposition by putting the head or face of these graphic characters on the body of the official characters from the monuments.

What interests me most about this operation is transgressing the logic of the monument, taking the monument down from its pedestal, and also redefining the meaning of an official monument, reconfiguring this logic in a different way. It creates another possibility to address these issues of structures.

For this operation I do with photomontages and collage, I take it directly from the Dada movement of the early 20th century, a group of artists that has always interested me since the beginning of my career and to whom I always return. I believe it is a historical moment where there is a paradigm shift in the figure of the artist. At this moment, around the 1930s, this paradigm shift consists of a displacement of the artist. The artist ceases to be a producer, a creator of images, and becomes an image editor, a consumer and an editor of images that have already been processed by other means. What the artist does is a selection, an editing, and a montage of these images, often giving them a political charge of scorn and strong criticism, especially in the historical context between the wars.

This image we are looking at is by an artist who fascinates me and has always influenced me, named Hannah Höch, a German artist, one of the few women in the Dadaist movement. In this piece we are looking at, what Hannah does is exactly this operation I was describing: this simple but effective operation of taking the torso from one image and the head from another to create a third character.

Another important influence in my career has been my teaching practice. It is an activity that I started in 2001 and continue to practice to this day. In fact, just before this talk, I came from giving a mentoring session to a group of artists. It is a practice that constantly enriches my work. For me, being in contact with emerging artists, young artists, being able to advise them and listen to their processes is a super valuable source of information that my work has always drawn from.

Also during this time, when I started teaching in 2001, I came into contact with the work of a theorist who was very important to me: Lev Vygotski, a Russian philosopher, psychologist, and theorist who wrote a lot about art, artistic processes, and cultural production. For Vygotski, cultural production is central to cognitive and social development. It is a sociocultural tool that allows for deep, complex thinking. From the moment I came into contact with his theories, I was fascinated and identified with them a lot. It was from these theories that I also began to structure these lines of research which, as I was telling you, have to do with memory, hegemonic structures, and the construction of identities.

The project I was telling you about at the beginning of the presentation is one I developed from 2002 to 2004. I presented it in 2004 as a result of my Young Creators grant. The project is called Memory and it is a participatory installation in which many of the themes that inaugurate my practice and my research topics appear. Many of the elements that I continue to work on emerge from this period.

Here we see how the theme of the bust format appears for the first time in my work. What we are seeing are busts—they are actually self-portraits made with plaster, the same plaster used to make chalk. The entire installation had three walls covered with chalkboard paint. The bases were also covered in chalkboard paint. There were sculptor’s mallets in the installation.

On the first day, the walls were clean and the busts were complete. At the moment of inaugurating the installation, the public entered and began to break the plaster busts with the mallets, obtaining fragments of chalk to be able to scratch the walls, write on them, or graffiti them. This is also the first time graffiti, graphic art, appears in my work, a subject that still interests me a lot to this day. And of course, the theme of memory also appears; that is the name of the piece.

For me, it is the construction of a mnemonic structure with the participation of the public, reflecting on the role of the artist in cultural production, and what role the public plays as an active agent. The themes of memory, graphics, and public participation are all sketched there, with the artist setting up a stage and then stepping aside so the audience can complete the installation.

Part of the installation was the eraser that appeared at the beginning of the presentation, which was framed with a chalkboard background. It is one of the elements I am currently revisiting and reframing to give it a reinterpretation from my current work. So I also make this link between this very early piece and the Body Snatchers project, using this eraser as a connection.

To finish, I chose this image, which we also returned to for the exhibition at the Museum of the City of Querétaro, where I am producing this new piece called Working Memory. It is very simple; it consists of making a direct intervention on the wall with chalkboard paint, an element I also take from my Memory installation. It is about establishing a march, establishing a symbolic space in the exhibition space—a symbolic space that opens up to a mnemonic review.

And well, that concludes my presentation.

In my drawing, I began to address themes of identity and customs of Sonora through portraits and objects, relating them. At first, it was mostly a drawing medium, and then, as my work progressed, I set out to explore the landscape a bit more. The landscape not in the city, but on the outskirts of the city, what is known as the brushland.

I was very drawn to this desert characteristic of living in the state of Sonora. I liked thinking a lot about the climate, the relentless sun, how bones would disappear and everything was corroded by the sun. And well, I also set out, over time and through the development of my projects, to... I realized I really liked talking about predation in the Sonoran desert. And yes, I mean the predation that occurs naturally between species. But I also began to think about another type of predation, which is the threat that human activities often represent to an ecosystem. I’m referring, for example, to pollution problems like in mining, which is very common in the north; there are mines that pollute water, that pollute the soil. I’m also referring to the overexploitation of resources. And another very important one, which will be relevant to this project I’m going to talk about, is organized crime.

The defenses of the flora and fauna to survive in extreme climates, contrasted with weapons elaborated by humans throughout history.

So, these are factors beyond a desert characteristic that is already dangerous, harsh, difficult due to extreme climates, making it even more dangerous with these factors happening there.

So, well, having said that, I’m going to talk about a project I started in 2020 titled “Wild Weapons” (Armas Salvajes). I proposed creating a hybridization from the flora and fauna of the Sonoran desert, the defenses of the flora and fauna to survive in extreme climates, contrasted with weapons elaborated by humans throughout history.

By this I mean, for example, that I began by researching how some communities in northern Mexico used natural resources and also how they made their weapons for hunting and, in this case, for instance, the Yaquis, also for wars in defense of their territory.

At the beginning, what really caught my attention while researching, for example, was the arrows, how they submerged them in toxins, in poison from venomous animals in their environment to make them much more potent and deadly. This arrowhead, from what I understand, wasn’t for hunting per se, this act of dipping it in toxin, but rather for wars, to make it more lethal.

I really liked that information, but I also began to research the current weapons used there, which are often there because of organized crime. So I started working with this material: shell casings. For example, organized crime uses assault rifles; the most common are the AK-47, the famous “Cuerno de Chivo” (Goat’s Horn), and the AR-15.

I started to imagine how I could invent my own bullets with these mixtures and animal traits.

I had the opportunity and was able to get this material to make a series of pieces. I got the shell casings; I wasn’t interested in the weapon itself, but rather these vestiges that I consider, these shell casings that come from those weapons, and that I had access to.

I started doing experiments, I consider them a kind of sketch. This is the real shell casing from an AK-47. What I did with epoxy clay was to start transforming these shell casings, which are empty. I started to imagine how I could invent my own bullets with these mixtures and animal traits. So I make this, alluding obviously to the tongue of a rattlesnake, and it’s as if it acquires another form and another content.

For example, with this one, I made a mold of the complete bullet, because when I got the material, I found three or four complete ones with the whole bullet, without the lead, but as if it had come out but the bullet was still there. I had the chance to make a mold of it and also add spines to it, speaking of the natural defenses of the flora, where their main characteristic to withstand the climate and predators are the spines. So, by combining them, I felt I was talking about a particular place and a very particular violence from the north, that occurs.

And well, I had an accident and cut myself, and I took the opportunity to make it even more dramatic and put blood on the object, to allude to this. Later on, I started to explore further.

And for example, here, what I’m representing with these shell casings is the complete dentition of a coyote. I liked displaying it in this way. I started modeling each canine tooth in wax and then later it was sent to be cast, and I gave it a coppery finish to give it the appearance of a bullet, as if this were the real bullet. And well, it was displayed in this form. This was assembled, it ended up measuring about 60 centimeters, and I liked thinking that, just like in natural history museums where they show a fragment of something larger, I felt the same thing happened here, and I was showing a fragment of a beast, an animal much larger, beyond a coyote. As if by fusing this and making it metallic, it transformed into another type of, much more potent, animal.

I’m going to talk about the variations I made with the shell casings. This is a bit of the detail of the first one. And then the other one I made was a rattlesnake. I also transformed the bullet, modeled a tongue and two fangs. Well, it’s not so apparent, but it’s the tongue and two fangs that allude to the rattlesnake. And from the repetitions, I drew this snake, and I also felt as if this animal had mutated and had this movement, based on the form, but with those shell casings we are now talking about a mutated animal for me, within the project. And well, a complete animal; here I was showing not a fragment, but the complete snake. And I also presented it on a base, on a table with a metal base, and I display it in this way.

Well, this is a series. So it includes the coyote’s jaws, the snake. And this year I made this other variation representing a desert centipede. This piece is currently in the Anahuacalli Museum and it also alludes to this animal and this mixture, and to talking a bit about the violence in northern Mexico.

And alongside this, I would like to talk about this part of the drawings. Parallel to making these sculptures, I also developed a drawing project with a FONCA grant, which I ended up titling “Bestial” (Beastly). And what you see here in this image is a horned lizard. It’s called horned lizard or “blood-shooter” (llora sangre). This species is native to Arizona and Sonora. And well, the characteristic of this lizard is that it’s small, it has spikes; its greatest protection is camouflage in the desert, which many species have to survive. The more unnoticed they go, the better, not confronting anything. That’s one of the characteristics of many of the defenses of the animals from there. But when it is in danger, when it’s about to be eaten, for example, by a coyote, which is one of its predators, it tends to shoot blood from its eyes to defend itself. From what I’ve read, the blood and the smell have a strong taste and an uncomfortable odor that makes the predators leave; it repels them, and it’s a defense method that I found very aggressive. I mean, imagine shooting blood from your eyes to save your life, and at the same time, very poetic.

I drew inspiration from these species to make this series of drawings, and also my interest wasn’t to represent the animal exactly as it is, but, as I mentioned, to create these hybrids. Here I made it more as if it were a raw gold nugget, alluding a bit with the spikes to the lizard’s form and with this stain. If you notice, there is this gesture, this stone, this fragment of gold, already makes it more organic, as if it had life, as if it were an entity. And at the moment of showing this blood stain in one of the... well, in the drawing.

And well, with this example, I made a variation of drawings in which I thought about the patterns of certain animals, the eyes of the rattlesnake, and it becomes a... or the vulture’s beak. I mean, how to transform them, mix them together, talking about animals and cacti, and creating this kind of entities, beasts. Here, too, they have another character. If you notice, from the sculptures to the drawing, I set out, as I said, not to represent the animals or the ideas exactly, but to transform them and make this type of beings or shields, and well, to give another reading to these natural aspects that I was researching and deciding upon.

For example, here it’s clearer. For example, here I thought of something that is a flower, a kind of desert flower, but in reality, I based it on a bullet shot into concrete, and how it looks when the lead “flowers.” And how it looks when it flowers, the lead and its... the coating. So I liked, as an image, adding teeth to it and making it as if it were a kind of carnivorous flower, I mean, something much more aggressive.

In the same way, I add these elements like fangs to the stone, and it already looks like an animal. This is a horn, originally from a bighorn sheep. They shed their horns every so often and they fall off. And I imagined it as if, due to contamination or something, I don’t know, something like that, it came to life and turned into a kind of crawling animal. But well, it was largely about me imagining this type of landscape that I considered as poisoned, contaminated, and how it transforms.

And well, after this project, I also made a series of drawings related to “Wild Weapons.” This one I simply titled “White Arms” (Armas Blancas). I was invited to Salon ACME, so I said, okay, I’ll propose something new to them, and I set myself the task. I no longer wanted to make beasts, but rather, thinking in terms of a white weapon [ed. note: bladed/edged weapon], I imagined as if I were in the desert and had bones, a nail or two, and tape, and I would make with them... Also, at this time, in 2023, I was very fascinated with the weapons made, for example, in prisons, where they sharpen a toothbrush and it serves as a knife. I mean, with something so austere you can join it, use tape, sharpen it, and make it much more, potentiate it to defend yourself.

And it was the same thing: imagining a skull that I would cut, add nails to, some tape, and then I could use it, but well, this was also largely from my imagination. With these variations, I also liked this contrast, as if it were a metal rod and I had welded fangs onto it like this. So I really liked imagining it, representing it in a drawing, but I said, you know what, I mean, I want to make it physical, to propose it in three dimensions, in sculptures. And I proposed it for the National System of Art Creators (Sistema Nacional de Creadores), and currently, since last year, I have been making bronze pieces.

Bronze pieces that I base on characteristics, for example, of a stinger, I exaggerate its forms and place them. But what I like here is that each object I make has the possibility of being used and of hurting someone or of defending you. I don’t want to be so violent anymore, but rather to defend yourself. And that has excited me a lot.

“They are sculptures, but that capacity to wound is what has appealed to me”

And well, I make these types of forms, or this one which I based on thinking about spines or horns, as if they were horns of an animal. It is wrapped in black leather and they are 35 centimeters, I mean, they fit in your hand. That’s how they are, they are weapons. Well, a bit larger, yes they weigh, but they have the power to be used. So, well, I liked that a lot. Obviously not, I don’t think of it as a performance in my work or that it would be used; they are sculptures, but that capacity to wound is what has appealed to me a lot to make these forms and present them in the exhibition space.

Alongside this, drawing has always been present. Here a bit of the... again returning to these beasts. But I found a book by a Sonoran writer named José Terán; he is from Sonora and he wrote a book called “Beasts and Imaginary Beings of Sonora” (Bestias y seres imaginarios sonorenses). It’s a kind of compilation of people who saw monsters, myths, imagine, monsters that had no explanation and that are passed down by word of mouth. I liked that a lot too. Of course, in that book was La Llorona, and we know La Llorona is in every city, all over the Republic. But among those characters, there was one called Carbunclo (Carbuncle).

They describe it as a being in the darkness that roams the Sonoran desert, that emanates light, that has the characteristic of appearing like a glowing coal in the darkness. That’s how they describe it, and this entity is described as a very aggressive being roaming in different places; they confuse it with car headlights and then see it disappear. Another characteristic is that it is an entity that doesn’t run but rather flies and is in the space.

I really liked imagining it and that it came from there. And I said, well, I searched and there are no drawings or references, at least I didn’t find any, truthfully. And well, I said, I’m going to make my own versions and I decided to make three. Well, this was the first drawing to try to achieve what I wanted here. It’s as if the... well, the white paper, you know I use a white background, but now to represent the darkness and the night, I filled it with charcoal, with charcoal pencil, and here then prismacolor, I mean, I use colored pencil. And what I wanted to achieve technically was as if a light emanated from the drawing, I mean, as if it were a glowing coal.

But well, I made this kind of phases and then I made three drawings that were Carbuncle one, two, and three, and I said, I’m going to make a series of these more demonic beings, I set out to make them more, more like that, malignant. And I also felt them as if they were alebrijes, because I took elements and movements from animals too, as if they were these guardians, like an entity there that defends that place, because they were also described as guardians that watched over zones of their desert. So, well, I made this.

I’m going to finish with this. Here they are, here I show these three images, three drawings. And one of the pieces related to this project is this one, which I titled “Column.” This is a bronze piece. I based it on several vertebrae from animals and human vertebrae; what I did was exaggerate them and make a series of 12 pieces. So, the column, also like the idea of the jaws, was like seeing a fragment of something much larger, I mean, imagining that someone found remains. Imagine if a beast had metallic bones and not... so, how would it look, how would one arrange it? And well, playing with that, I presented it like this. This is a bit of a detail, and I conclude my presentation. Thank you

La vida nos pone a veces en situaciones difíciles donde no tenemos muchas opciones para decidir. Sin embargo, al conocer la obra de Lucía Prudencio, nos damos cuenta de que vernos obligados a “volver al inicio” es también una oportunidad para explorar de nuevo, para hacer las cosas de manera diferente. Es una lección para soltar y reconocernos, tener más cuidado con lo que nos rodea y detenernos un poco más en los detalles; incluso en lo más primigenio.

Cuando Lucía estaba por graduarse de la universidad de artes de La Esmeralda sufrió una enfermedad que la obligó a estar en reposo absoluto por sesenta y un días. Esto la llevó a regresar a casa de sus padres en Veracruz, cerca del río y del bosque de niebla que siempre está presente en su obra. Durante este tiempo realizó su proyecto final de la universidad, cuyo título era exactamente ese nombre: “61 días de reposo absoluto, 2007”.

Durante ese periodo empezó a trabajar en un taller de cerámica. En esta exploración, utilizó piedras reales del río cercano a su casa, mismas que recolectó en sus primeras salidas a caminar y las recreó con moldes para hacerlas en cerámica. Este gesto tiene connotaciones interesantes, pues por una parte alude al estado aparentemente inmóvil de las piedras, pero que en el río están en constante cambio, aunque de manera casi imperceptible. Por otra parte, al ser huecas estas piedras flotan. De manera poética, en uno de los registros de la obra, aparece la artista bañándose en el río con las esculturas dispuestas flotando en el agua.

Mientras recuperaba sus fuerzas, realizó una investigación y trabajo de campo a lo largo de seis meses en Chiltoyac; una de las comunidades que continúa haciendo alfarería de la manera más tradicional en México. Aquí pudo observar y aprender cómo, en su mayoría mujeres, trabajan el barro con técnicas ancestrales, que iban desde obtener los diferentes tipos de barro y pigmentos de barriales, hasta la fabricación de hornos de ladrillos para cada quema. Asimismo la preparación de pigmentos naturales para decorar los cómales, una pieza artesanal ligada al maíz y a la comida tradicional, y por lo tanto íntimamente asociada con la cultura.

Para Lucía las habilidades y los oficios están íntimamente ligados a lo cotidiano. Ella reconoce que su obra y su vida están vinculadas de manera muy cercana al lugar en el que creció: el bosque de niebla; un ecosistema sumamente amenazado por la explotación y la expansión de las ciudades.

Arte, utilitarismo y oficio

Al llegar de vuelta a Ciudad de México realizó un nuevo proyecto. Aunque Lucía no es católica, en algún lugar había escuchado que poner un altar a la Virgen de Guadalupe en determinado lugar ocasiona que la gente no tire basura. Como ella vivía en una calle con este problema hizo eso mismo. La pieza se llamó “Santo Remedio, 2009”.

A pesar de que este proyecto tiene un tinte diferente a los demás con los que habitualmente trabaja, revela aspectos de la cultura mexicana (y pre-colombina, ya que la Virgen de Guadalupe tiene sus orígenes en la deidad Tonantzin) y deja ver este interés latente desde los inicios de la obra de Lucía: que el arte sirva para algo, que genere una conciencia, un cambio, que impacte directamente a las personas. En este proyecto involucró a amigos de su edificio y vecinos, los cuales colaboraron haciendo un tequio de limpieza e instalando el altar. Esta iniciativa fue creciendo al grado tal que otras personas, e incluso desconocidos, se apropiaron del altar, cuidándolo y poniéndole flores. La pieza siguió su curso y el altar continúa ahí, aunque con otra virgen pues la original fue robada.

Proceso

Para Lucía el proceso es igual o más importante que el resultado final; es decir, es la pieza misma. Por eso en su cuerpo de obra se encuentran varios proyectos constituidos como bitácoras, que incluso en algunos casos se convierten en libros.

En sus procesos creativos es muy importante dar rienda suelta a la exploración de manera libre. Sus bitácoras no están pensadas dentro de una narrativa lineal, sino que son el reflejo del tren de pensamientos con el que desarrolla cada proyecto.

Desde que regresó a Veracruz, después de haber vivido una temporada en la Ciudad de México, comenzó a trabajar en un taller de impresión y grabado, que le ha permitido experimentar con diferentes técnicas, especialmente con textiles. En las telas encontró un soporte que le brinda una flexibilidad que el papel -un material mucho más delicado- no le daba. Esto le permitió producir piezas enormes que pueden viajar y mostrarse en diferentes contextos.

En el año 2012 realizó un mural de 15,000 metros cuadrados en colaboración con el artista Daniel Berman. Esta intervención estaba ubicada en un túnel por el que transitan muchos carros en la ciudad de Veracruz, y mostraba las siluetas de plantas endémicas y en peligro de extinción del bosque de niebla.

Posteriormente continuó esa misma línea de investigación, lo que la llevaría a realizar series como “Flora en peligro” (2017-2018), en la que se centró particularmente en estas mismas plantas; u otro proyecto titulado “Epífitas: Calendario Textil” (2019-2020), en el cuál observó de manera minuciosa los ciclos de la naturaleza a través del registro gráfico de la floración de bromelias y orquídeas en el transcurso de un año.

Actualmente trabaja en una investigación sobre las polillas. Estos insectos conllevan connotaciones que por lo general son negativas; al contrario de las abejas o mariposas, a las que se les otorga gran importancia, probablemente debido a su belleza. Sin embargo las polillas son responsables de gran parte de la polinización dentro del ecosistema que envuelve al bosque de niebla. Por lo tanto, la obra de Lucía ya no sólo se enfoca en las plantas, sino que empieza a migrar hacia otras temáticas.

Como artista Lucía no busca ser confrontativa. Su obra es una manera de mantenerse fiel a sus ideales y generar conciencia. En sus propias palabras: “El arte se convierte en un medio para la conservación ecológica mediante la creación de jardines figurativos con flores silvestres del bosque de niebla en áreas protegidas de la región central de Veracruz”.

A través de la obra de Lucía, comprendemos que los gestos más simples y las tareas más básicas tienen el potencial de generar grandes cambios, al menos en términos de conciencia. Identificar una silueta, nombrar las cosas, y conocer el nombre de una planta, un animal, o una flor es quizás el primer paso para proteger y valorar a la naturaleza.

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Life sometimes places us in difficult situations where we don’t have many choices. However, upon encountering the work of Lucía Prudencio, we realize that being forced to “return to the beginning” is also an opportunity to explore again, to do things differently. It is a lesson in letting go and recognizing ourselves, being more mindful of our surroundings, and pausing to reflect more on the details, even the most primal ones.

When Lucía was about to graduate from La Esmeralda art school, she fell ill, which required her to rest for sixty-one days. This led her to return to her parents’ home in Veracruz, near the river and the misty forest that always appears in her work. During this time, she completed her final university project, which was aptly titled: “61 Days of Absolute Rest, 2007.”

During this period, while regaining her strength, she began working in a pottery studio. In this exploration, she used real stones from the river near her home, which she had gathered during her first walks, and recreated them using molds to make ceramic pieces. This gesture carries interesting connotations: on one hand, it refers to the seemingly immobile state of the stones, yet in the river, they are constantly changing, albeit almost imperceptibly. On the other hand, as hollow stones, they float. Poignantly, one of the records of the work shows the artist bathing in the river, with the sculptures floating in the water.

During this time, while recovering her strength, she also carried out fieldwork and research over six months in Chiltoyac, one of the communities that continues to make pottery in the most traditional way in Mexico. Here, she observed and learned how, mostly women, work with clay using ancestral techniques, from collecting different types of clay and pigments from the riverbeds to building brick kilns for each firing. She also witnessed the preparation of natural pigments used to decorate the comales, a traditional handcrafted item linked to corn and food, and thus intimately tied to culture.

For Lucía, skills and crafts are intimately connected to the everyday. She recognizes that her work and her life are closely linked to the place where she grew up: the misty forest, a highly threatened ecosystem due to exploitation and urban expansion.

Art, Utilitarianism, and Craft

Upon returning to Mexico City, Lucía undertook a new project. Although Lucía is not Catholic, she had heard that placing an altar to the Virgin of Guadalupe in a certain place would lead people not to litter. As she lived on a street with this problem, she decided to do just that. The piece was titled “Santo Remedio, 2009.”

While this project has a different tone from her usual works, it reveals aspects of Mexican culture (and pre-Columbian culture, as the Virgin of Guadalupe has its origins in the deity Tonantzin), and reveals a latent interest present from the very beginning of Lucía’s work: that art should serve a purpose, raise awareness, provoke change, and directly impact people. In this project, she involved friends from her building and neighbors, who collaborated in a collective cleanup and altar installation. This initiative grew to the point that others, even strangers, took ownership of the altar, caring for it and adding flowers. The piece continued on its course, and the altar remains there, although with another virgin, as the original one was stolen.

Process

For Lucía, the process is as important as, if not more important than, the final result; that is, the piece itself. This is why her body of work contains several projects structured as journals, which, in some cases, even become books.

In her creative processes, it is very important to allow free exploration. Her journals are not meant to follow a linear narrative, but rather reflect the stream of thoughts with which she develops each project.

Since returning to Veracruz, after having lived in Mexico City for a while, she began working in a printmaking workshop, which has allowed her to experiment with different techniques, especially textiles. She found in fabrics a medium that provides flexibility, which paper—a much more delicate material—could not offer. This allowed her to produce large pieces that can travel and be shown in various contexts.

In 2012, she created a mural of 15,000 square meters in collaboration with artist Daniel Berman. This intervention was located in a tunnel through which many cars pass in Veracruz, showcasing the silhouettes of endemic and endangered plants from the misty forest.

She then continued this line of research, leading to series such as “Flora en Peligro” (Endangered Flora) (2017-2018), where she focused particularly on these same plants, or another project titled “Epífitas: Calendario Textil” (Epiphytes: Textile Calendar) (2019-2020), where she closely observed the cycles of nature through the graphic recording of the blooming of bromeliads and orchids over the course of a year.

Currently, she is working on a study of moths. These insects are generally associated with negative connotations, unlike bees or butterflies, which are given much importance, probably due to their beauty. However, moths are responsible for a large part of pollination in the ecosystem surrounding the misty forest. Therefore, Lucía’s work is no longer solely focused on plants, but is beginning to migrate toward other themes.

As an artist, Lucía does not seek confrontation. Her work is a way of remaining true to her ideals and generating awareness. In her own words: “Art becomes a means for ecological conservation through the creation of figurative gardens with wildflowers from the misty forest in protected areas of central Veracruz.”

Through Lucía’s work, we understand that even the simplest gestures and most basic tasks have the potential to generate significant change, at least in terms of awareness. Identifying a silhouette, naming things, and knowing the name of a plant, animal, or flower is perhaps the first step toward protecting and valuing nature.

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On September 18, a series of Artist Talks took place in Colonia San Rafael, Mexico City, an event organized by Catalina Restrepo Art Office. This document presents the translation and transcription of the talk

Watch in YouTube / Follow Roger Muñoz on Instagram

I’m going to talk a little about my work—what’s happened recently, a residency I did in London, and what I’ve been doing since I came back to Mexico.

For this residency in London, at a place called Gasworks, I applied with a project connected to my ongoing research, something I call tropical gothic. It’s a concept mostly coined in Colombian cinema, but it also works for literature and other fields. It takes the tropes of the Gothic novel—not medieval Gothic architecture, but Gothic as a cultural sensibility tied to the macabre, the perverse, the uncanny—and displaces them into a Latin American context. Instead of castles and cold climates, it’s the heat, the tropics, the political dynamics of the region.

The point of the residency was to explore my own relationship between Costa Rica and London. I grew up immersed in subcultures—punk, horror films, goth music. Going to London was like traveling back to the birthplace of so many of those things that shaped me, from romanticism all the way to punk. It wasn’t about having a clear plan, it was about confronting those ghosts head-on and seeing what would happen.

At first I was fascinated by Victorian houses. In Costa Rica there’s something called “tropical gothic architecture.” In the end I didn’t go too deep into that; instead, I started thinking about magical objects. What would a magical object look like? How could I create a kind of relic myself?

I had in mind the work of Paul Thek, an artist I love. In the 1960s he created a series of “Reliquaries” after a trip to Italy, where he encountered the relics of saints. When he came back to the United States, he turned against Pop art and began encapsulating things like rotting meat in acrylic. He’s a faggot I love! There’s also the biographical side: he died of AIDS in the 1980s. I connect with all of that, including his obsession with death, which is also very present in my work. Here’s one of his pieces, another relic—the skull of Mary Magdalene in a basilica in France. That mix of something clinically clean and something filthy, like a corpse or remains, I find beautiful. It was a strong reference for me during the residency.

At the Gasworks Open Studio I showed some of the things I made there. I wasn’t aiming for a finished piece but rather to experiment. I hadn’t had a studio in three years; I’d been working in my bedroom, where all I could really do was paint. So I decided to make objects, choosing materials and playing with them.

“I’ve always disliked “queer art” as a kind of vindication—it feels awful to me. But I wanted to work with my own experience, with the dark side of gay life”.

This trip confronted me with my ghosts from punk. I knew all of that was dead, but the question was what could I do with it now? I was living in a neighborhood in South London, hanging out with dealers, with people in the crystal meth scene, getting into the sex scene. I wanted to work with that experience.

I’ve always disliked “queer art” as a kind of vindication—it feels awful to me. But I wanted to work with my own experience, with the dark side of gay life. One thing that struck me was how some guys at those parties, very geeky types, made their own bongs. They were like witchcraft objects, magical in their own way. I really envied one I saw. I met the guy too late to work with him, so I decided to make my own totems out of what I stole at these orgies: crystal meth pipes, drug residue, cigarettes, socks, and also some of my own things I didn’t want in my life anymore. I wanted to leave them inside those objects, to be rid of them.

I made several pieces. One came out of this crazy Russian guy I hooked up with who wore a tiger coat. He ghosted me, and later I found a sweater in a thrift shop identical to his. I bought it and put it into a work. Another piece had more to do with the gothic tropical houses in Costa Rica—the shapes of those buildings.

I wasn’t interested in knowing exactly where I was going. I was generating things while living with these people. What I did one night, I’d take to the studio the next day and see what came of it. At first I just piled up objects without knowing what to do. Since painting is easier for me, I started drawing and painting to warm up. Gradually I moved into more direct execution

I was buying anatomical objects, body parts that interested me for their sculptural potential. I started combining them with epoxy clay and with things from Sniffany. Sniffany is me in drag, my female persona. She was doing other projects in London at the same time, and I took parts of her—eyelashes, pipes, fragments of her looks—to build my objects. It was a mix of sewing, gluing, painting, sculpting.

Wig heads became important too. Their shape—like a vase—reminded me of Egyptian funerary sculpture. I decided to use them instead of ceramic vessels, because fabric heads let me glue and sew things onto them. One of them I named after an ex-pornstar I met who was completely lost to crystal. I filled the piece with objects I stole from him, plus cigarette butts I saved from parties. It became a kind of relic: something symmetrical and clean on the outside, but inside full of dirty things like butts and drug residue.

Another piece came from an Egyptian guy who threw endless orgies in his chaotic apartment. One night I lost a tiger sock there and decided to use the one I had left in a sculpture. I named it after him—Man—because he seemed so afraid, so unreadable.

I also built a showcase, a kind of cabinet of curiosities, inspired by asymmetrical Costa Rican wooden houses, but with different colors: pale blue with white turned into purple. I added a branch I had hunted down obsessively, pipes, flies, cigars. I wanted it to work like a reliquary, while also playing with the idea of the vitrine.

In parallel, I became obsessed with horses, reading about the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, thinking about the eroticism of horses, and how they are ancestors of vehicles. I had this delirium of wanting to do something sexual with a horse. Eventually I made a huge horse painting, over two meters wide, and then a whole series I called H&H—Horny & High—the Grinder abbreviation I kept seeing.

Toward the end I made two large daytime paintings, inverting the values I’d been using. In one, a horse is completely subdued by a figure. I was thinking of Goya, who I always return to. I don’t paint in oil anymore; I hate it. Instead, I’ve been working on paper, watery, ghostly.

While in London I met Benjamin Orlow, who runs a space called Chads. He invited me to show there. At first we thought of a piece I had done in Colombia—these transvestite lechonas—but in London I couldn’t find a Colombian restaurant to make them the way I imagined. So we used a raw pig instead. I gave it a lawyer’s wig and left it to rot in the space. It decomposed, pooled fluids, drew in flies. That’s exactly what we wanted: to let it rot.

That show also included works I made at Gasworks: a papier-mâché horse using my calendars and failed drawings, a children’s gym reconfigured as a saddle with heads and pipes, cheap fake barrister wigs (the real ones were absurdly expensive, so these were a joke), a Dracula sweater (Christopher Lee from Hammer Films) that I didn’t want anymore, and even a huge stuffed dog I found on the street, which I skinned to use its fur.

All of it was a collection of lived objects, transformed into sculptures, totems, relics. Improvisation was essential: finding the object and building from it.

I think with objects, especially when you’re making assemblages, that’s really the point: when you feel a connection with something, you just have to hold onto it and not let go.

London is done for me. That whole chapter is over. Then I arrived here with the chance to show at the Anahuacalli, an exhibition about fascism—simply because I wanted to. I’d already been working on a series called Aspen, this luxury resort town for American millionaires. I’ve never been there, obviously, but it’s always been lodged somewhere in my head.

“My obsession is with how they use me, how I can exorcise them, how I refuse to be used the way I always have been. Right?.. Costa Rica with bananas, flip-flops, and all the rest of the clichés that get piled onto me.”

What I wanted was a kind of distorted mirror of Aspen—these impaled white guys, right? My obsession is with how they use me, how I can exorcise them, how I refuse to be used the way I always have been. Right?.. Costa Rica with bananas, flip-flops, and all the rest of the clichés that get piled onto me.

So I asked myself: how do you work from a place that’s so foreign to you, like winter sports, winter clothes? Things that, to me, look beautiful, even exotic. That’s how I ended up with these impalements—connected to pigs, to slaughter, to that urge to search through objects.

I didn’t show the close-up photos here, but the works had these totems and other elements—flags from the U.S., trinkets from London, pins, little references to power everywhere. There was even a Trump baseball cap that Avantgardo had stolen, and a Swiss bell he also swiped in Basel. Sniffany carried it around, ringing it and calling it “schnitzel time.” It was this private joke that I eventually folded into the piece.

So it became this mash-up of symbols, conspiracy imagery I was drawn to: the heads, the reptilians, all that nonsense. Not because I believe in it, but because it captures how elites actually behave—as if they’re no longer human, as if they’re above the law. In that sense the reptilian metaphor makes sense. They really are extra-human, at least in terms of power.

And yes, honestly, I just wanted to impale some white guys. I sculpted each head by hand with epoxy clay, choosing wigs, accessories, figuring out the look for each one. It had a lot to do with drag, with the idea of constructing a look. It was funny, in its way. Then I built something like a tipi with ski poles—I’d been wanting to use ski poles as spears for a while.

“How can something so clean end up being more disgusting than something dirty?”

That whole project tied back to what I’d been doing with Mini: rich ladies with impossible hairdos. Once I finished it, I started working a lot with ChatGPT, feeding it my drawings, figuring out how to get back what I wanted—to help me visualize things.

That’s when I started thinking about “magic objects” and making a mummy out of camping backpacks, like the ones my dad used in the nineties. The idea came from a dream: I was in my house in Costa Rica when my mom and brother brought in this horrible black mummy, laid it on the bed, and said, “Dad’s going to live with us now.” I resisted: “No, I don’t want to go with him.” But the mummy moved, followed me around, appeared in every room. The house was small, so I kept running into it. It was both terrifying and absurd.

So I thought: I need to make a mummy. I’d drawn mummies years before, so I told ChatGPT to generate one out of backpacks, like my dad’s. That gave me the image, and now I’m designing the patterns, dismantling objects to build something else. I don’t know yet where this mummy will take me, but I’m in the middle of it.

At the same time, I’ve been experimenting with Sniffany. We collaborated on a photo series, presenting ourselves as two different artists making different kinds of work. That gave me the freedom to parody my own practice and try things I wouldn’t normally do—like photography.

We started combining household objects with images of Callista Gingrich, this ultra-conservative politician, playing with diptychs. I thought of Baldessari, of objects, of how these collisions could generate something new. Then I began mummifying domestic objects with old bandages, pushing the series further.

What I stumbled onto was a new kind of strangeness—one that came from cleanliness rather than dirt. I asked myself: how can something so clean end up being more disgusting than something dirty? That’s where I am right now. I want to print these works at a large scale, to give them physical presence.

For me, it’s been fun. ChatGPT spits out very generic images, but if I control the input carefully, I can push it somewhere else. It becomes a playful, useful tool—another way of making photographs without actually taking them, another way of drag, of parody.

That’s what I’m working on now. There are other projects too, but this is the one that’s most alive for me. It feels like, finally, London is falling into place.

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On September 18, a series of Artist Talks took place in Colonia San Rafael, Mexico City, an event organized by Catalina Restrepo Art Office. This document presents the translation and transcription of the talk

Watch in YouTube / Follow Celestial Brizuela on Instagram

My artistic practice is rooted in animation, a medium I’ve inhabited for many years. A central piece is an hour-long film I developed using poetic texts written by my mother and myself—a body of work that later evolved into a published anthology featuring a selection of my own poems.

I work with what I call “expanded animation,” which allows me to bring together all the elements I love: maquettes, overhead projectors, live painting, drawing, marionettes, hand puppets—a hybrid language of forms. I’m drawn not only to building worlds but also to the tools that magnify them. How, for instance, can a macro lens give life to something as small as a drop of gel? How can the audience feel that shift in scale? There’s something compelling about manipulating something tiny that later fills a nine-by-six-meter screen.

In recent years, I’ve started creating physical objects—like a sculpture of a stone. I see these as “devices for viewing parallel worlds.” I’m fascinated by what objects hold inside—the tension between surface and interior, the hidden worlds within. A simple stone can carry memory, a sense of place. This particular piece contained the idea of a cenote, as if the stone preserved its own landscape and history. In a way, it also speaks to extractivism. It was shown at the Museo Anahuacalli, creating a dialogue with the museum’s collection as well as with those broader themes.

I recently began showing in gallery spaces in Mexico, something I hadn’t done before. My work had previously been shown in cultural centers, museums, libraries, even public spaces—but never a gallery. It wasn’t a conscious goal, but now that it’s happening, it’s interesting to see the work recontextualized. One piece involves miniatures arranged on a madroño branch, where I return to the magnifying glass as a narrative and perceptual tool. I’m interested in live cinema connected to animation, and here, the magnifying glass—whether as part of the sculpture or handled by the viewer—creates a unique sense of framing and duration. Each person constructs their own film through how they look and interact.

A recent work is titled “Vinieron a buscarme y quemaré mi casa.”. 2025, “They Came to Look for Me and I Will Burn My House.” It’s an hour-long piece that began as a second chapter in a family saga. I often collaborate with my family. I’m the youngest of six, with three different fathers. My name is Celestial, and I come from a very mobile, semi-hippie household. Themes of home and migration run deep. I was born in Jujuy, Argentina; at one, we moved to Salta, then to the countryside. I attended eight different schools before I was eight—the first time I had something like a stable home. That longing is why I build small worlds and miniatures; they’re like portable homes, amulets heavy with personal memory.

For this second saga, my brother, a musician, came from Portugal with his performer partner, and my sister came from Argentina with hers. The piece became intensely theatrical. I’d never worked with so many people on stage, though I’ve always collaborated with my sisters. It was new yet familiar. The work blends object theater, marionettes, expanded animation, live music, performance, and spoken text. The narrative emerges from poetic relationships between objects and bodies. The house becomes a character—not always a safe haven, but sometimes a place you need to escape from, or that has caused pain. It’s a deeply biographical piece, almost bibliographic, and it may never be performed the same way again, since we all live in different countries now.

Not long ago, I closed my first solo show at the Galería de Arte Mexicano. I wanted the exhibition to reflect all my technical and material explorations. One piece, “Sisters,” deals with migration, distance, and the way I experience art as something ritualistic—a space for alchemy, for sublimating psychic and emotional states, both individually and collectively.

That piece is structured like a counterclockwise clock. It came together when one of my sisters almost died, while I had to prepare work for another show. The distance made the anguish sharper. The miniatures are just 1.5 cm tall. I wanted to break the cycle of grief. A clock or circle can feel trapping, but I wanted to see it as something that closes to allow something new to begin. One scene shows a sister grieving the other’s illness; they cross through black waters of memory, find precious stones, help each other out of a well, and end in awe before a newly branched family tree.

I see art as a way to give form to desires—almost a magical act. It may sound naive, and it doesn’t always change reality in tangible ways, but I believe it helps us move through life with more tenderness and hope.

I’m also deeply engaged with themes of landscape and interspecies cooperation. Lately, I feel a need to look beyond the human. I’ve been working a lot with insects. One piece features 53 miniature migrants crossing a flaming branch, its ends charred. A bridge made by ants helps them pass. I’m playing with a horizontal scale—insect and human on the same level—questioning the hierarchy of a world where bigger is better. What if we valued life itself, and recognized that the planet thrives on cooperation?

I’ve always felt affection for insects, not just as miniatures. There’s fantasy here, but also truth: they aerate, nourish, and clean the earth; they’re behind 60% of our food. Their cooperation is genuine, involuntary, and beautiful.

Another work, “We Must Return Home,” is my largest device to date: a double meteorite. To me, a meteorite is the ultimate migrant—a fragment torn from its origin, extraterrestrial, burning through the atmosphere, yet holding water inside. I’m drawn to those contrasts.

I’m now developing a feature film where insects that would normally be predators or prey form a kind of family. It’s a new scale for me—I’m used to working alone or with one cameraperson, but this is a choral piece with multiple puppets and sets moving together. I like the idea of a longer narrative; my scripts usually grow from material experiments and poetic connections between objects.

I always work with organic and modified materials. With the rise of AI, I’m curious conceptually and formally—especially as the film deals with the tension between the organic world we knew and the genetically modified reality we’re entering. We’re suspended between the physical and the digital, for better and worse.

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On September 18, a series of Artist Talks took place in Colonia San Rafael, Mexico City, an event organized by Catalina Restrepo Art Office. This document presents the translation and transcription of the talk

Watch in YouTube / Follow Erick on Instagram

You could say that as a kid, I was really, really restless. I wasn’t an only child; my parents were a biologist and a psychologist. There was a time when they had work to do. Both of them are teachers, so with a kid at home, the solution was like, “give him some paper and let him draw,” you know? That was always the go-to activity, always something manual. I also spent a lot of time outside with my cousins, and with video games—which was a whole other, almost fascinating world. It was like living between the virtual reality of Nintendo and PlayStation and the raw reality of home, where I ended up feeling a bit lonely, with no one to play with, just lost in a sheet of paper or with some modeling clay.

Then there was a point when a cousin introduced us to this whole manga thing, a lot like Sailor Moon and Saint Seiya, all those animes. I’m not sure if it was 2000 or 2001; I must have been nine or ten when the whole Akira wave hit me, and it just blew my mind. It was a revelation: this super crazy landscape, chaotic lights, cables everywhere—very post-punk, futuristic, and it really caught my attention.

Later, my mom got cable TV at home, and it was like, “wow, we have cable now.” I’d get into all these shows that sometimes aired late at night because they were for adults. I saw these figures that represented the dichotomy between good and evil, often hypersexualized, like the character’s wife. The depiction of the devil was there, and he had a relationship with his daughter, who would sometimes hide. It was this strange cartoon world that started to define an aesthetic I liked: backlighting, interesting chiaroscuro. It was attention-grabbing, and it caused a bit of friction with my parents because I’d sometimes sneak peeks at murder scenes that fascinated me. Like, a slow-motion bullet scene that made me think, “Wow, how did they do that?” I was around eleven or twelve then.

My mom separated from my dad, and I stayed under her wing. My mom paid for everything; she was the cool one, practically like a friend, but she also set boundaries. Because of her strict side, she developed a spiritual interest and told me, “The community priest needs a helping hand.” So I became an altar boy at the church in the Santa Apolonia neighborhood. The priest was a good guy, an older dude who’d drink and hang out with the community at festivals. He had studied at the seminary in Rome and had a collection of religious books about the saints. He’d explain iconography to me: for example, Saint Apolonia, who was beatified because her teeth were pulled out, leaving her toothless—the saint of dentists.

Seeing paintings of the saints, like Saint Lawrence being burned or Saint Peter crucified upside down, left a deep mark on me. This imagery wasn’t just foreign; it had a profound meaning. I brought this into my painting and drawing. For instance, in one painting, there’s a kind of offering to a dead being in an idyllic landscape, with a girl offering something. All done with colors I like to work with: greens, yellows, toxic shades. One of these seeds was the figure of children. They aren’t represented much in art, and for me, the Child symbolizes regression, purity, sincerity—a human being exploring their world depending on their environment.

I like using images from historical and personal archives, from the late 19th and 20th centuries, where children contributed to society through forced labor. This idea still bothers me. I’ve worked on these themes in drawing and painting: the child character alongside a cat, which sometimes has a color code or is in an apocalyptic context. I’m interested in the aesthetic of comics and manga, creating visual dialogues with artists like Goya, Borremans, or those from the New Leipzig School.

Eduardo Kac has a piece where a plant is enclosed in a case and self-reproduces using the light generated by its own photosynthesis. It’s growing and depends on itself; the bioluminescent genes turn it into almost a living monster. The rabbit, an iconic image that I love, appears in some works as a nod. I’m interested in the relationship between mutant animals that are sacrificed to feed the community, and metaphors, like the spider that represented capitalism for the German Expressionists; here, the children are devouring this form of capitalism.

I never really intended to be a painter, but I enjoyed drawing on paper so much that I started working on large sheets, focusing solely on drawing. I include myself and my girlfriend as children as a self-reference, along with relatives and friends. In recent works, around 2021, the universe expands: everyday animals become extraordinary, characters reinterpreting elements like Buddhist temples. For example, a cart with a white cat bringing hope for children, connecting with my own childhood and the shows I watched.

Now, as an adult, I’m reinterpreting these characters, mixing youth, punk, rock, and my high school experiences: studying, going out, attending concerts. My daughter appears in some pieces. I’m revisiting Mexican artists I discovered in university: Estrella Carmona, thanks to Paco Castro, and other draftspeople like Melecio Galván and Marcos Castro. All of this gave rise to an apocalyptic universe: mutant insects surrounded by light, working with archetypes and metaphorical figures. Each character has their own personality; drawing allows me to explore contrasts, light, saturation, black and white, reminiscent of experimental cinema.

A recurring theme is the interaction between nature, industry, human and animal relationships, with children actively participating in almost fantastical worlds. The mutant dynamic and metaphors of beings like lizards represent the lowest strata, dependent yet independent from adults. All of this creates a play of images, dynamics, and symbols that I’m constantly exploring.

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La exposición Una que cubre la palabra que la nombra en Galería LABOR marca la primera exposición de Luis Camnitzer, figura central del arte conceptual, en una galería mexicana desde 1968. No se trata de un simple recorrido por más de seis décadas de producción: es la puesta en evidencia de cómo el artista ha convertido al lenguaje en campo de batalla y al espectador en cómplice inevitable de la construcción de sentido. El título de la exposición, un acierto conceptual, sintetiza la práctica de Camnitzer: desmontar los códigos—lingüísticos, económicos, institucionales—que, al nombrar la realidad, también la encubren y condicionan.

La museografía de Tatiana Bilbao potencia esta dimensión. Los paneles suspendidos que permiten ver anverso y reverso de las obras desestabilizan la lectura frontal del objeto artístico y revelan aquello que habitualmente queda oculto, como la firma. Esa insistencia en mostrar el revés no es un detalle formal, sino la reiteración de un gesto conceptual que atraviesa toda la obra de Camnitzer: exponer el mecanismo antes que la apariencia. Pintura Original (1972) lo ejemplifica con contundencia al desglosar los rubros que conforman el precio de la obra —concepto, firma, comisión de galería— y dejar claro que el valor artístico no es un absoluto, sino una convención sostenida por la economía y las instituciones.

Incluso los gestos aparentemente periféricos, como las gorras distribuidas en la inauguración, refuerzan la misma lógica. Estos objetos, que evocan la informalidad propagandística de las gorras “MAGA”, funcionan como statements portátiles. Con frases como In_dignity we trust —donde el guion bajo fractura el lema estadounidense para hablar de indignidad— u Oligarchy transformada en OILigarchy, Camnitzer ejecuta una crítica punzante a la retórica política vacía, la dependencia de los combustibles fósiles y la erosión de la confianza en las democracias contemporáneas. Otro de los diseños lleva bordada la inconfundible firma de Donald Trump, signo convertido en marca y fetiche político, cuya grotesca estilización ha circulado incluso en documentos judiciales relacionados con el caso Epstein, donde aparecía dibujada en un cuerpo desnudo. En este contexto, la gorra con la firma no solo remite al espectáculo de la política-espectáculo, sino que enlaza con una de las obras en exposición donde Camnitzer demuestra cómo el precio de una pieza podía variar según el tamaño de la firma: una operación brillante sobre el valor, la autoría y la fetichización del poder.

“allí [ Luis Camnitzer] denuncia dos errores persistentes: confundir la creación con la artesanía que le da cuerpo y suponer que un diploma en arte garantiza supervivencia económica.”.

Esta dimensión crítica conecta la exposición con otra faceta central del artista: su escritura. Camnitzer no sólo ha producido obra, también ha generado algunos de los análisis más lúcidos sobre la educación artística y el sistema del arte. Su conferencia La enseñanza del arte como fraude (Museo de Arte de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2012) es un ejemplo paradigmático. Allí denuncia dos errores persistentes: confundir la creación con la artesanía que le da cuerpo y suponer que un diploma en arte garantiza supervivencia económica. Más allá de la provocación, el texto es un llamado a nombrar con precisión: cuando se confunden las categorías —decorativos, sociales, recreativos, ocupacionales, artesanales—, se trivializa la importancia del arte y se invisibilizan sus potencias críticas. Para mí, como educadora, pocas veces alguien ha expresado con tanta claridad la urgencia de repensar la enseñanza del arte.

Un ejemplo contundente de su compromiso surge de una experiencia como curador pedagógico en un museo que prefirió mantenerse en el anonimato. Tras proponer incluir proyectos educativos en una exposición, recibió como respuesta: “Esto es un museo, no una escuela”. Camnitzer renunció y realizó un gesto conceptual: superpuso en Photoshop sobre la fachada del museo la frase “El museo es una escuela: el artista aprende a comunicar, el público aprende a hacer conexiones”. La identidad del museo es lo de menos; lo crucial es el choque de ideas: la visión tradicional que separa arte y educación frente a la propuesta de un museo como espacio de aprendizaje. Lo que comenzó como una “venganza” se transformó en una obra conceptual instalada en varias instituciones alrededor del mundo, incluso en el Museo Jumex (2021), ejemplificando su capacidad para convertir la crítica pedagógica en práctica artística duradera.

“Camnitzer no solo ha puesto en crisis el objeto artístico, sino también la pedagogía, el mercado y la institucionalidad que lo rodean”

Esa claridad también se percibe en su relación con instituciones de poder. En 1988, con motivo del 50 aniversario del Guggenheim, Camnitzer criticó la política de adquisiciones de su colección de arte latinoamericano, argumentando que la categoría funcionaba más como segregación que como inclusión. Su declaración, posteriormente archivada por el Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, señalaba la ausencia de criterios de selección coherentes y la forma en que los artistas latinoamericanos eran confinados a una sección separada, ignorando la diversidad y el peso histórico de sus contribuciones. Décadas después, en la exposición Under the Same Sun (2014), su instalación Art History Lesson #6 transformó la sala en un aula vacía: proyectores de diapositivas que no mostraban nada, solo rectángulos de luz. Ese vacío obligaba a confrontar los huecos de la historia del arte y a preguntarse quién escribe los relatos canónicos. Con esa obra, el artista desplazó la autoridad del maestro al espectador, subrayando que el poder de narrar y pensar la historia puede —y debe— cambiar de manos.

Camnitzer no solo ha puesto en crisis el objeto artístico, sino también la pedagogía, el mercado y la institucionalidad que lo rodean. Y lo ha hecho desde un lugar incómodo pero indispensable: la crítica al poder. En un contexto donde la etiqueta “Latinoamérica” sigue funcionando como bloque homogéneo, muchas veces cargado de estigmas, su insistencia en complejizar los términos es un gesto profundamente político. Hoy, cuando en Estados Unidos el término “latinoamericano” es instrumentalizado de manera deshumanizadora —para hablar de migrantes, criminales, invasores, ilegales—, la obra de Camnitzer recuerda que el arte no puede reducirse a un adorno multicultural ni a una etiqueta de mercado. Su práctica es una forma de resistencia: señalar la violencia del lenguaje, desmontar los mecanismos de exclusión y devolver dignidad a aquello que la retórica oficial intenta negar.

No solo consolida el diálogo transnacional, sino que posiciona en el centro del debate mexicano a un artista cuya obra, en su “universal simpleza”, sigue interrogándonos sobre cómo construimos sentido, en quién confiamos y cómo resistir cuando las palabras mismas se han vuelto campo de batalla. La exposición no es solo una muestra de arte; es una lección de integridad crítica.


Fuentes

1. Camnitzer, Luis. "La Enseñanza del Arte Como Fraude" [The Teaching of Art as Fraud]. Esfera Pública, 21 Mar. 2012, esferapublica.org/la-ensenanza-del-arte-como-fraude/.

2. Camnitzer, Luis. Entrevista. "Luis Camnitzer: 'Art Thinking'." The Art Educator's Talk, thearteducatorstalk.net/en/?interview=luis-camnitzer-art-thinking-2.

3. Una que cubre la palabra que la nombra. Texto curatorial. Galería LABOR, Mexico City. [Fechas 20 Sept. – 15 Dic. 2025]

En Galería LABOR
Dirección: Francisco Ramírez #5 Col. Daniel Garza Miguel Hidalgo 11830 Ciudad de México

The exhibition Una que cubre la palabra que la nombra at Galería LABOR marks the first commercial presentation in Mexico of Luis Camnitzer, a central figure in conceptual art since 1968. This is not simply a retrospective spanning over six decades; it is a demonstration of how the artist has turned language into a battlefield and made the viewer an unavoidable accomplice in the construction of meaning. The exhibition’s title, a conceptual triumph, encapsulates Camnitzer’s practice: dismantling the codes—linguistic, economic, institutional—that, while naming reality, simultaneously obscure and condition it.

Tatiana Bilbao’s curatorial design amplifies this dimension. Suspended panels that allow viewers to see both the front and back of the works destabilize a frontal reading of the art object and reveal what is usually hidden, such as the signature. This insistence on showing the reverse is not a formal detail, but a recurring conceptual gesture throughout Camnitzer’s work: exposing the mechanism rather than the appearance. Pintura Original (1972) exemplifies this approach by breaking down the components that make up the artwork’s price—concept, signature, gallery commission—demonstrating that artistic value is not absolute but a convention upheld by institutions and the art market.

Even seemingly peripheral gestures, such as the caps distributed at the opening, reinforce this logic. These objects, reminiscent of the informal propaganda of “MAGA” hats, act as portable statements. Phrases like In_dignity we trust—where the underscore fractures the American motto to speak of indignity—or Oligarchy transformed into OILigarchy, deliver sharp critiques of hollow political rhetoric, fossil fuel dependency, and the erosion of trust in contemporary democracies. Another design features the unmistakable signature of Donald Trump, a sign transformed into a political brand and fetish, grotesquely stylized in documents circulating in connection with the Epstein case, where it appeared drawn on a nude figure. In this context, the Trump hat not only references spectacle-driven politics but also ties back to one of the works on display in which Camnitzer demonstrated how the price of a piece could vary according to the size of the signature—a brilliant operation on value, authorship, and the fetishization of power.

“He identifies two persistent errors: conflating creation with the craft that gives it form, and assuming that an art degree guarantees economic survival”.

This critical dimension connects the exhibition with another key facet of Camnitzer’s practice: his writing. He has produced some of the sharpest analyses on art education and the art system. His lecture La enseñanza del arte como fraude (Museum of Art, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2012) is exemplary. He identifies two persistent errors: conflating creation with the craft that gives it form, and assuming that an art degree guarantees economic survival. Beyond its provocation, the text is a call for precision in naming: when categories—decorative, social, recreational, occupational, artisanal—are blurred, the importance of art is trivialized and its critical potential is rendered invisible. As an educator, few writings have expressed with such clarity the urgency of rethinking art education.

A particularly striking example of Camnitzer’s commitment comes from his experience as a pedagogical curator in an unnamed museum. When he proposed including educational projects within an exhibition, he was met with the response: “This is a museum, not a school.” Camnitzer resigned and performed a conceptual gesture: he superimposed, using Photoshop, the phrase “The museum is a school: the artist learns to communicate, the public learns to make connections” on a photograph of the museum façade. The identity of the museum is irrelevant; the significance lies in the clash of ideas—the traditional model that separates art from education versus Camnitzer’s vision of the museum as a space for learning and interaction. What began as a “revenge” prank evolved into a conceptual artwork, subsequently installed in several institutions around the world, including Museo Jumex (2021), exemplifying his ability to turn pedagogical critique into enduring artistic practice.

“Camnitzer has not only questioned the art object itself, but also pedagogy, the market, and the institutions surrounding it.”

This clarity is also evident in his interactions with institutional power. In 1988, for the Guggenheim’s 50th anniversary, Camnitzer openly criticized the museum’s acquisitions policy for Latin American art, pointing out how the category functioned more as segregation than inclusion. His statement, later archived by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, highlighted the lack of coherent selection criteria and the confinement of Latin American artists to a separate section, ignoring their diversity and historical significance. Decades later, in the exhibition Under the Same Sun (2014), his installation Art History Lesson #6 transformed the gallery into an empty classroom: slide projectors displayed nothing but rectangles of light. This void compelled viewers to confront the gaps in the art historical canon and question who writes the official narratives. With this work, Camnitzer shifted the authority from teacher to viewer, emphasizing that the power to narrate and interpret history can—and should—change hands.

Camnitzer has not only questioned the art object itself, but also pedagogy, the market, and the institutions surrounding it. He does so from a position that is uncomfortable yet essential: a critique of power. In a context where the label “Latin America” is still treated as a homogeneous block, often laden with stigma, his insistence on complicating these terms is profoundly political. Today, when in the United States the term “Latin American” is deployed in dehumanizing ways—to refer to migrants, criminals, invaders, or “illegals”—Camnitzer’s work reminds us that art cannot be reduced to multicultural decoration or marketable labels. His practice is a form of resistance: exposing the violence of language, dismantling exclusionary mechanisms, and restoring dignity to what official rhetoric seeks to erase.

The exhibition not only consolidates transnational dialogue but positions Camnitzer at the center of the Mexican art debate. His work, in its “universal simplicity,” continues to interrogate how we construct meaning, whom we trust, and how we resist when words themselves have become a battlefield. This exhibition is not just an art show—it is a lesson in critical integrity.


Sources

1. Camnitzer, Luis. "La Enseñanza del Arte Como Fraude" [The Teaching of Art as Fraud]. Esfera Pública, 21 Mar. 2012, esferapublica.org/la-ensenanza-del-arte-como-fraude/.

2. Camnitzer, Luis. Interview. "Luis Camnitzer: 'Art Thinking'." The Art Educator's Talk, thearteducatorstalk.net/en/?interview=luis-camnitzer-art-thinking-2.

3. Una que cubre la palabra que la nombra [One That Covers the Word That Names It]. Exhibition. Galería LABOR, Mexico City. [Dates of Exhibition, 20 Sept. – 15 Dec. 2025]

At Galería LABOR
Address: Francisco Ramírez #5 Col. Daniel Garza Miguel Hidalgo 11830 Ciudad de México

In the art world, business is not our first language. Much of what we do is driven by conviction, passion, and vocation. But in a time when governments are cutting back on cultural and social funding, understanding how business generates resources has become our only path to sustainability—and to independence.

And let me be clear: this is not about surrendering to ruthless capitalism. It’s about adapting in order to survive. Because as idealistic as it may sound, we know how essential art is for humanity. Yet increasingly, art is left in the hands of those who treat it only as a business—confusing it with entertainment, decoration, trends, or fashion. Something fleeting and superficial.

“In a time when governments are cutting back on cultural and social funding, understanding how business generates resources has become our only path to sustainability”

If we want to preserve the depth, the complexity, and the transformative power of art, we must learn to take control of the tools that allow us to sustain it.

In the fourth session of our Art Business Lab, we explored one of those tools: validation of the product or service. As Steve Blank—often called the father of modern entrepreneurship—reminds us, validation must come not from assumptions or surveys alone, but from personal experience.

This is especially true in the arts. The logics of the art market often move in the opposite direction of traditional industries. Our “clients”—whether artists, collectors, galleries, institutions, or the general public—cannot be fully understood through focus groups or generic surveys. Their needs are best revealed through real, lived experience. And this kind of validation is what ensures that what we are offering responds to a real demand.

But validation is only the beginning. To carry out projects, we need different forms of capital. One of them is financial capital—which doesn’t always mean money in our own pockets. Sometimes it means knowing who to ask: a grant, a loan, or a third-party investment. The challenge is that those who speak the language of finance don’t usually speak the language of art. That’s why we, as cultural workers, need to learn to translate our ideas into metrics and numbers that generate confidence and trust.

The challenge is that those who speak the language of finance don’t usually speak the language of art.

This is where business models become key. In this session we analyzed the subscription model. Because relationships in the art world tend to be long-term, this model is highly applicable, and it can make projects sustainable. But to succeed with subscriptions, we must shift our mindset: we are not selling products—we are building lasting relationships. And with that shift, the metrics we use must also change.

Some of the most important are:

• Churn Rate & Net Promoter Score (NPS): How many of our clients are promoters, passives, or detractors? How loyal are they?

• Customer Lifetime Value (LTV): The average monthly revenue per client multiplied by the average number of months they remain with us.

• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): How much it costs us to bring in one client.

These metrics show whether a subscription-based project is truly sustainable. If you spend more to acquire a client than that client will pay over their lifetime, the model simply doesn’t work.

And ultimately, this is also about something bigger: combating precarity in the art field. That may be a topic for another day, but I believe the problems we face—individually and collectively—can only be solved by taking action. By taking the pan by the handle, as we say, and claiming independence.

I believe the problems we face—individually and collectively—can only be solved by taking action

Because business may not be our first language. But if we learn to speak it on our own terms, it can become the means that allows art not just to survive, but to thrive.

Mauro Giaconi (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1977) presents Temporal Ventaja at Arte Abierto, an exhibition that destabilizes our certainties. Beyond a mere play of material inversions, this is not an illusory trick; it is the backbone of a deeper critical statement. Temporal Ventaja establishes an urgent need to question everything, even what appears most solid and real. Giaconi unsettles our frames of reference, challenging the authority of materials and, by extension, the structures of power they represent.

During an open studio, the artist shared a reflection that permeates the exhibition: his childhood was marked by the political tensions of Argentina’s dictatorship, a context where survival depended on simulation, appearance, camouflage. “Making something look like something else is not a trick, it’s a survival instinct,” he said. This idea resonates strongly today, in a time when censorship feels close at hand, forcing us to disguise words with symbols, to use a watermelon to name the unnamable, or an anime flag as a gesture of protest.

The exhibition opens with the prow of what seems to be a monumental ship, constructed from welded metal sheets. Yet, as we approach, we discover there is no metal: everything is made of paper, graphite, and silicone. The temptation to touch it is inevitable, as if our eyes were playing a game against reason (though, of course, that is not allowed). Inside the structure, bars that appear to be wrought iron are, again, silicone. The illusion is perfect.

On the second level, the logic is reversed: a group of plants that seem fragile and organic are, in fact, made of iron and crafted from machetes—a tool that here becomes a potent symbol of struggle and resistance. Giaconi builds a universe where appearance is the first trap, inviting us to doubt even what we consider unquestionable. Materiality ceases to be reliable: everything is simulation, everything is strategy, everything is language.

This game of material inversions is not a mere formal exercise; it underpins a deeper critique. Temporal Ventaja presses the urgency of doubting everything—even what seems most real. Giaconi destabilizes the frameworks we rely on, exposing the fragility of matter and, by extension, of the power structures it evokes.

Temporal Ventaja speaks not only visually, but politically and philosophically: What is real when reality itself is in crisis? How do we survive in times when camouflage becomes necessary once again?

It is also essential to highlight Arte Abierto’s commitment as a platform for radical experimentation. Its programming, which has featured figures like Ugo Rondinone and now brings Mauro Giaconi, demonstrates that artistic relevance is not measured in years, but in conceptual rigor and the discipline that sustains a practice.

An exhibition that reaffirms contemporary art as a territory for doubt, resistance, and critical rethinking.

#ContemporaryArt #MauroGiaconi #ArteAbierto #InstallationArt #LatinAmericanArt #TemporalVentaja #ArtInCDMX #ArtExhibition #ExperimentalArt

Mauro Giaconi (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1977) presenta Temporal Ventaja en Arte Abierto, una exposición que descoloca nuestras certezas. Lo que a primera vista parece un simple juego de inversiones materiales no es un truco ilusionista: es la columna vertebral de un comentario crítico mucho más profundo. Temporal Ventaja nos plantea la urgencia de dudar de todo, incluso de lo que creemos más sólido y real. Giaconi desarma nuestros marcos de referencia y cuestiona la autoridad de los materiales y, por extensión, las estructuras de poder que representan.

En un open studio, el artista contaba algo que atraviesa toda la muestra: su infancia estuvo marcada por las tensiones políticas de la dictadura argentina, un contexto donde sobrevivir implicaba simular, aparentar, camuflar. “Hacer que algo parezca otra cosa no es un truco, es un instinto de supervivencia”. Esta idea resuena muchísimo hoy, en un momento donde la censura vuelve a sentirse en la nuca y nos obliga a disfrazar palabras con símbolos, a usar una sandía para nombrar lo innombrable o una bandera de anime como gesto de protesta.

Al entrar a la exposición, nos encontramos con la proa de un barco monumental hecho con placas de metal soldadas. Pero cuando te acercas, descubres que no hay metal: todo está hecho de papel, grafito y silicona. La tentación de tocarlo para comprobarlo es inevitable (aunque, claro, no se puede). Por dentro, rejas que parecen de hierro resultan ser también de silicona. La ilusión es perfecta.

En el segundo nivel, la lógica se da vuelta: un grupo de plantas que parecen frágiles y orgánicas están hechas en realidad de hierro y machetes, una herramienta que aquí se carga de sentido como símbolo de lucha y resistencia. Giaconi construye un universo donde la apariencia es la primera trampa, invitándonos a desconfiar incluso de lo que damos por hecho. La materialidad deja de ser confiable: todo es simulación, todo es estrategia, todo es lenguaje.

Este juego de inversiones materiales no es un gesto formal ni decorativo; sostiene un comentario crítico profundo. Temporal Ventaja nos recuerda la urgencia de cuestionarlo todo, hasta lo que parece más real. Giaconi desestabiliza los sistemas que damos por sentados y expone la fragilidad de la materia, y con ella, la de las estructuras de poder que evoca.

Temporal Ventaja no sólo se lee desde lo visual, también desde lo político y lo filosófico: ¿qué es real cuando lo real está en crisis? ¿Cómo sobrevivir en tiempos donde el camuflaje vuelve a ser necesario?

Vale la pena también destacar la apuesta de Arte Abierto como plataforma de experimentación radical. Su programación —que ha presentado a artistas como Ugo Rondinone y ahora a Mauro Giaconi— confirma que la relevancia artística no se mide por los años, sino por la fuerza conceptual y el rigor que sostiene una práctica.

Una exposición que afirma que el arte contemporáneo sigue siendo un territorio para la duda, la resistencia y la crítica estructural.

The impact of art in the transformation of cities and communities has been widely underestimated. The simplistic view of art as mere beauty and technical skill has led governments, companies and associations to fall into clichés, failing to understand its true potential. Too many times we have witnessed projects, initiatives and campaigns that attempt to beautify urban areas with what they consider "art". They paint brightly colored houses in marginal areas; adorn the streets with series of sculptures of cows, hearts, skulls, butterflies, trees, and everything imaginable intervened; or invite graffiti artists to paint stereotypical portraits of indigenous people, peasants, children or Frida Kahlo's portrait in all its variants (pop, punk, neon, etc.) among other similar initiatives that naively pose as solutions to the profound problems of inequality and social injustice that affect the population.

I feel that the problem lies in the lack of communication between art managers/promoters and entrepreneurs/investors. I think it's a matter of language, since many people in the art world are not good at pulling numbers and giving statistics; and on the other hand, investors are not sensitized to the real art that is inserted in professional circuits and that has nothing to do with the search for beauty and technical mastery, exclusively, as many may think.

"... in the art world are not good at pulling numbers and giving statistics; and on the other hand, investors are not sensitized to the real art"

I remember a project in which the promoter tried to impress the CEO of a company by mentioning a long list of artists and curators involved. This did not captivate the CEO, as he did not know any of them, nor did he understand the relevance of the project. It would have been more effective to present figures, returns on investment, social media reach and other tangible aspects. Sure! Ideally, investors would support artistic projects for their content and depth, but in reality, funding is needed, and it is necessary to present the project in terms that investors understand as a win-win.

This scenario is unfortunately common, although there have been brilliant managers who understood early on how to approach this aspect and managed to establish connections with entrepreneurs to raise funds for high-impact projects. Graciela de la Torre, for example, did so with the MUAC in Mexico City in 2008; a museum that is a reference for the Latin American scene. There are also historical cases of sensitive and sharp entrepreneurs, such as Ciccillo Matarazzo in Brazil, who managed to move forward with the São Paulo Museum of Modern Art and the São Paulo Biennial, thus positioning a world-class cultural event that changed the image of the city, which used to be associated with the favelas, but which for decades has been more recognized for its Biennial.

Bienal de São Paulo. Fotografía de Luisa Panza publicada bajo licencia Creative Commons

The Foreign Direct Investment Confidence Index (FDI)

The FDI or "Foreign Direct Investment Confidence Index", analyzes and classifies certain characteristics that encourage the 25 main countries in the world to invest in certain places. In general, the variables taken into account are, among others: interest rate differentials; world stock market return indexes and yield curves; world and country GDP per capita growth rates; inflationary risk and tax burden; real exchange rate; institutional quality; commercial openness and some measures of macroeconomic uncertainty; among many others.

But a city's environment improves to the extent that its people feel safe, free and happy. The real art -not the ornaments and colorful things I mentioned at the beginning- becomes an escape valve for social tensions. I am referring to protest art; sometimes political art; art that is inserted into professional and academic circuits. These projects, which often deal with strong, sordid and heavy themes, as well as being colorful, beautiful and eye-catching, do not focus on formal aspects, but are produced to invite to dialogue, debate, reflection, etc.

In the first instance, investors may fear that this type of art could affect the image of their company or government. However, in a broader perspective, the existence of these spaces for expression becomes, as I said before, an escape valve, creating a fertile ground for business success. It has been proven that the presence of these spaces decreases crime rates, reinforces the feeling of freedom of expression, stimulates creativity and supports dialogues that motivate people to do things; which impacts - indirectly and positively - on people's happiness index. This, in turn, can transform environments and change the image of entire sectors, cities and countries. It may sound romantic and ethereal, but below you will see some concrete examples that demonstrate how the influence of art on the economy is reflected in a quantitative, tangible and evident way.

"The existence of these spaces for expression becomes, as I said before, an escape valve, creating a fertile ground for business success"

We must bear in mind that art is not only painting and sculpture, but there are also proposals categorized as Social Engagement Projects that, far from being approached from a welfare vision, such as charity or social work, are initiatives designed from art to impact communities positively from the root.

For example, in the framework of the UNAM’s curatorial project called Residual, led by curators Paulina Cornejo and Gonzalo Ortega in 2010, German artist Thomas Stricker proposed a piece entitled La tierra nueva de Tlatelolco (The new soil of Tlatelolco). The project consisted of talking to the neighbors of the Tlatelololco residential complex - historically affected by traumatic episodes such as the massacre of 1968 and the earthquake of 1985 - and organizing some families to make a giant compost bin that would nourish the complex's planters. It was so successful that it has been mutating, but it still exists, no longer as a piece of the artist, but as part of the community to which it belongs. This project gave identity and purpose to the neighbors; it changed the urban landscape of the area through planters and fertile urban gardens. It was not a project where the artist came to plant some pretty little plants for the duration of the exhibition. On the contrary, he had the sensitivity to understand the needs of the neighbors, identified the identity crisis caused by historical scars, and gave them tools so that they could build, take care of and assume it as their own.

La Tierra Nueva de Tlatelolco, 2010. Thomas Stricker

Fotografía cortesía del artista

There are many projects and artists like this one that have managed to do significant things for different communities, addressing different problems, and I refer to projects of this type when I say real art. That art that the promoters have perhaps failed to communicate to businessmen and governments in order to have more resources and be able to multiply them.

Cultural tourism

The Bilbao effect is a term coined by economists to describe the social and economic impact that the Guggenheim Museum has brought to this city. Bilbao was a post-industrial wasteland. The city was built on moribund shipbuilding and steel industries, impossible to revitalize for the 21st century. The museum completely transformed the city's landscape, attracting millions of tourists and investors every year. It is the quintessential example of art as a driver of The Foreign Direct Investment Confidence Index.

According to a study published by the market consulting firm FMI (Future Market Insights), global cultural tourism revenues are set to total $5,931.2 billion by 2023; and global demand is likely to increase at a compound annual rate of 14.4% over the next ten years. In addition, the WTTC (World Travel and Tourism Council) states that the entire tourism sector generates 300 to 350 million jobs and that cultural tourism accounts for 40% of worldwide revenue.

These figures are revealing and although this study encompasses many categories that are not particularly linked to the visual arts and new media - such as gastronomy, cultural heritage, languages, music, crafts, dance, etc. - its exponential growth can be seen in the number of visitors to museums, biennials, exhibitions and art fairs around the world. Art Basel alone receives more than 90,000 visitors annually; in 2022 the Venice Biennale broke the record with 800,000 and the Louvre Museum in Paris received 7,726,321, which in its case means an increase of 173% compared to the previous year.

Before Art Basel had its first international venue in Miami in 2002, the state of Florida was known for Mickey Mouse and its beaches. Today it ranks eighth in the rankings of cultural tourism destinations. Today it is a point of reference in the international art scene and the rise of the Miami Design District, coupled with the number of museums that have opened since then in this city is impressive.

Art Basel in Miami Beach General Impression. © Art Basel. Fotografía publicada bajo licencia CC

"Before Art Basel had its first international venue in Miami in 2002, the state of Florida was known for Mickey Mouse and its beaches. Today it ranks eighth in the rankings of cultural tourism destinations."

Transformation in sectors - Gentrification

The economic growth thanks to art is also perceived in neighborhoods and districts. Here I have to make use of a word that brings with it both positive and negative connotations: Gentrification.

In Mexico City there is no one who has not noticed the transformation of the Roma neighborhood. However, this was not even a pale shadow of what it is today, before the Roma-Condesa Cultural Corridor, inaugurated in 2009, initially promoted by the UNAM museum, MUCA Roma and curator Ana Elena Mallet, who continued it until 2019, which revived an exercise carried out by some galleries in the nineties to reactivate the area.

Fotografías por Gabriela Prado cortesía

Corredor Cultural Roma Condesa

Colonia Roma was a part of the city that was still recovering from the devastating earthquake of 1985. There lived those who wanted to be close to La Colonia Condesa, but could not afford it, since rents in that area were relatively cheap. This initiative sought to map the galleries and alternative spaces in the neighborhood and get everyone to agree to open at the same time. It was impressive to see the thousands of people walking through the streets, going from gallery to gallery and of course this motivated many entrepreneurs to open bars, cafes, restaurants, galleries, etc.

Something similar also happened in Bogota in the Barrio San Felipe neighborhood, when architect and collector Alejandro Castaño and industrial engineer Juan Carlos Paris, bought properties in the sector and invited some nearby galleries to move their headquarters there. In 2013 FLORA ars+natura -a space managed by José Roca (one of the most recognized Colombian curators in the world)- opened its doors, and in the surrounding area they added workshops and artists' studios; alternative spaces; initiatives that transformed an old and neglected neighborhood into one of the most visited cultural districts in Latin America.

Now, for this to happen in an area, many aspects have to be aligned: infrastructure; development policies; etc; but undoubtedly, the presence of spaces dedicated to art is a constant in all cases.

On the other hand, it should not be ignored that gentrification entails a problem. Specifically: it raises the price of rents in the area and that is something that definitely needs to be addressed. However, it is undeniable that its effect translates into consumers with high purchasing power, which spills an important flow of capital on local businesses. We see it today with the digital nomads who choose Mexico as one of their favorite cities to live in. While they work, they earn in dollars and spend in pesos.

"... [ Art] It is one of those rare cases in which some win and we all win."

A few years ago on Regina Street in downtown Mexico City, an interesting exercise took place. The government (in a previous administration) hired designers and artists to improve the image of stores and mini markets in the area. With this initiative, local businesses dignified their spaces, created a pedestrian corridor, improved the appearance of the area, and substantially reduced the levels of violence (which were particularly serious there). Casa Vecina, an alternative art space that served as a meeting and dialogue point, also became operational. The exercise improved the quality of life of local residents, attracted people from other sectors and clearly showed the enormous benefits of keeping their environments clean, cared for and beautiful.

In conclusion, these examples of neighborhoods, cities and countries that have managed to captivate foreign investment have a common denominator: the realization of highly relevant artistic projects. Whether viewed from a humanitarian perspective, or through the lens of investment, art has always been and will always be a big business that positively impacts all parties and whose wave of expansion is enormous. It is one of those rare cases in which some win and we all win.

Exploramos conceptos como el capital simbólico y cómo el reconocimiento, las alianzas estratégicas y el contexto en el que se presenta una obra pueden definir su impacto. A veces, el problema no es que una pieza carezca de valor, sino que está en el lugar equivocado, rodeada de dinámicas que no la potencian.Además, reflexionamos sobre lo que nosotros, como gremio artístico, debemos exigir (y también rechazar) para proteger nuestro trabajo. ¿Cómo navegar, por ejemplo, las subastas "altruistas" que, aunque bienintencionadas, pueden desdibujar el valor real de las obras si no hay un respaldo profesional detrás?Los invitamos a escuchar, debatir y sumarse a la conversación. ¡Agradecemos profundamente a quienes comparten sus visiones y enriquecen este diálogo!

#Arte #Valor #Legitimación #BenditoAfterSchool🎧 Escúchalo ahora y sigue aportando a la reflexión colectiva. ¡Tu voz cuenta!

No buscamos demeritar el trabajo de los artistas, sino abrir la conversación sobre el papel de la Bienal como el foro internacional más importante del arte contemporáneo. Al mismo tiempo, esta noticia nos sirve como excusa para hablar de un fenómeno que percibimos como una constante, presente en varias instituciones y en diferentes ciudades, y que está tomando mucha fuerza.

No quiere decir que el tema de la descolonización no sea importante o no amerite un foro de discusión. El punto es desde dónde. Ese ejercicio de mostrar prácticas netamente formales ancladas a tradiciones ancestrales, sin un trasfondo más allá de eso, se queda en el cliché y en la idea exotizada que el circuito académico dicta que los países colonizados “deberían” representar. En ese sentido, esta “descolonización” superficial se convierte en una paradoja: termina reforzando las mismas estructuras que dice cuestionar.

También hablamos del momento crucial que vive el arte mexicano, con artistas jóvenes y establecidos que proponen miradas complejas, sofisticadas y profundamente contemporáneas sobre estos mismos temas, o incluso sobre otros igual de relevantes, ¿por qué no?

Si tienes recuerdos o anécdotas de exposiciones que hoy están en los libros y tú viviste en persona, cuéntanos en los comentarios. ¡Nos encantará leerte!