All in Feature
de Appel // Everything is New // The Right to Breath as Shibboleth
Part i: "What I say now may not be true tomorrow"
I picture us like a PacMan macroverse. 7.8 billion Inkies, Blinkies, Pinkies and Clydes swarming, munching dots, dodging boogie-ghouls until a glitch freezes our hubbub at random. Liminal transitions suddenly feel like forever positions.
But in reality, that's a view of privileged malaise. With two 00's like nostrils through which to inhale and exhale, 2020 is the year of reckoning the relative right to breath as a shibboleth dividing the global populous into two classes.
Momus // Marfa’s Two-Step: The Uneasy Landscape of Minimalist Heaven
The town’s charms consolidate around a yin and yang of two primary attractions: the preservation of Donald Judd’s presence and the promised absence of anyone else. This contrast tinges the town with an aura of pilgrimage, which is thickened by its relative remoteness. With the nearest city about three hours away, Marfa’s location presents a gauntlet for would-be visitors. If Marfa is Minimalist heaven, it seems unlikely that its patron saint, the famously prickly Donald Judd, would suffer the presence of devotees by convenience.
Good Magazine // Charting A Greener Future For Mexico’s Aztec Floating Gardens
Charting A Greener Future For Mexico’s Aztec Floating Gardens.
Two projects aim to save Mexico’s ancient canals.
Momus // Jill Magid's Post-Truth Diamond Proposal
As the spectacle of the 2016 United States presidential elections played out over the summer, Mexico hosted a surreal visit by a well-known, polarizing New Yorker. Mirroring Trump in her own way, Brooklyn-based conceptual artist Jill Magid brandished symbols of wealth and messianic messaging, while conducting a master-class in media manipulation.
SFMOMA Open Space // Drawing the Curtain: New and Old Violence in 3 Acts
It was my first week in Mexico City and someone was screaming outside my window. At first I thought it was a drunk headed home from a nearby bar; as it grated on, I realized this was no drunk.
Art Review // Francis Alÿs
Kim Córdova looks at recent evolutions in the artist's interventions in the social and urban fabrics of cities, as he moves from Mexico City to a more international context
Momus // Misogyny and the Myth of the ’90s at Mexico City’s Kurimanzutto
Kurimanzutto is a pristine, vaulted gallery in the San Miguel de Chapultepec neighborhood of Mexico City. As part of the recent exhibition XYLAÑYNU. Taller de los Viernes, cumbia music drifts over the guard onto the sidewalk, casting a nostalgic spell on the airy space.
Momus // The Function of Gossip as Criticism in Mexico’s Artworld
Gossip is undoubtedly universal but in Mexico gossip – chisme – seems to exert an influence that distinguishes it from other international art centers.
Momus // Contemporary Art Writing in Mexico
“Hablar de corrupcion es tocar a Mexico en el corazón,” my mentor said. “Be careful.”
Tocar. Transitive verb meaning: to touch, to feel, to play, to have to do something, to ring, to sound, to touch on, to strike, to be one’s turn, and in some sense it has no direct translation.
I recently began writing reviews of exhibitions in Mexico City for an English-speaking audience. Quickly I started feeling like a remedial parakeet raised on a 24-hour news cycle. Almost every article I write seems to invoke questions of corruption, impunity, violence, or insecurity. Whether talking about a performance artist visiting from Spain, an established Mexican video-art pioneer, emerging artists, or even Michelangelo and Da Vinci retrospectives, there always seems to be a salient reason to somewhere reference rampant political corruption as context.