New exhibitions: Miguel Ángel Ríos and Carlos Motta
Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros – La Tallera
Tres Picos 29, Colonia Polanco
Delegación Miguel Hidalgo, Distrito Federal
México, 11560
T (55) 55313394
The Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros aims to approach the political problem in art through two divergent strategies from different generations: Miguel Ángel Rios (originally from Argentina and living between New York and Mexico City) and Carlos Motta, an interdisciplinary artist who lives and works in New York City.
Miguel Ángel Ríos presents Through the Frontier. Ríos, one of the pioneers of the concept of the Latin American as a political strategy and paradoxical question, presents a new production titled The Ghost of Modernity, which takes the viewer through the borders of the peripheral landscapes of Peru, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. Originally conceived as a three-screen projection, the piece features a transparent cube, a paradigm of modernity, to anthropologically dissect space in the continent.
In contrast with his recent videos, Ríos disregards explicitly violent images to explore the abandoned and dusty time frame that characterizes the margins of Latin America; social spaces disconnected with the dynamism and agitated qualities of the global economy. In the style of the work he produced in the eighties, Ríos returns to a position of political identity that underlies the Viewpoint of the Vanquished.
With the screening of The Ghost of Modernity and a series of sober drawings (white on white), Ríos reinforces the use of film as an eyewitness account to the political debate that distinguishes the social and cultural stages of these countries.
On the other hand, Carlos Motta presents the Shape of Freedom, (a project that originated at the New Museum, New York) which investigates the history of sexual activism in Mexico. In collaboration with Susana Vargas, a researcher of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Motta delves into one of the least discussed and studied topics in Mexican art history through an interdisciplinary approach. Specifically, the piece presents the historical processes of the re-signification of the pink triangle—a symbol used by the Nazis in concentration camps to identify homosexuals—in Mexico and other Western countries to propose an alternative for individual autonomy.
Through the geometric harmony of a triangle and the complex history of its social use, Motta questions the present and future of sexual activism while leaving a graphic variation of the pink triangle on the facade of the museum pertaining to the Mexican problem.
Shape of Freedom has several moments focused on the complexities of the Mexican context: a mural, the chronology developed by the artist and a discursive event with local activists and researchers on the 6th of April.
With these exhibitions, the Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros continues the discourse of the notions of the political, public and museum to expand on the possibilities of the debate between local and international exchanges.
About Proyecto Siqueiros: In Mexico, Sala de Arte Público (SAPS) and La Tallera are joined public institutions devoted to problematizing the relationship between art and politics, based on the historical figure of David Alfaro Siqueiros. Recently renovated, La Tallera offers in Cuernavaca an international residency program, exhibition space and a specialized program on art criticism. In Mexico City, the SAPS puts forth and distinguished museological discourse by specializing in generating artistic situations and new productions with artists that maintain a rigorous dialogue with art and politics.