Painting (Painting)

Machine Music (Embroidered Tank I)

Installation (Installation)

Pedro Reyes’s Los Mutantes ( Mutants , 2012) is composed of 170 plates that combine characters from ancient and modern mythologies. As in a periodic table, animals and objects are combined with humans (male or female), providing a rational framework for the irrational products of human imagination. A Cartesian matrix such as this must follow certain rules.

Installation (Installation)

Adam Smith

Installation (Installation)

Karl Marx

In Reyes’s words, “We should be able to extract the technological nutrients before we excrete our waste. There is a missing organ in our social metabolism which would work as a stomach or intestines. The Recyclone is a device made of plastic containers that fit into each other.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

The video work Si Señor by Abigail Reyes is about the typical representation of women in Latin American office culture. Collaging together a chorus of subservient snapshots of women responding to an off-screen man with “si señor”, the accumulative effect of these spliced together scenes weighs heavy as the film plays on both humour and collective discomfort. In order to complete the work the artist watched hours upon hours of telenovelas, the impact of which on the collective consciousness is explored through her film.

Installation (Installation)

The work Sarta (String) by Reyes Santiago Roja is part of a larger series of works that examine the commercialization of the tobacco plant and its relationship to the meaning and use of tobacco by Native American tribes such as the Mayas, Aztecs, Incas or Tainos, which attributed spiritual qualities to tobacco such as the smoke carrying one’s thoughts and prayers to the sprits. In this work the artist studied the forms of tobacco leaves native to Latin America and recreated their shapes with commercial tobacco packaging from such global brands as Marlboro or Camel to the most popular Colombian brand Pielroja. The leaves made of the packaging material are lined up on a string as if they are hung out to dry as in traditional tobacco making processes.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

The artist duo João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva traveled to Japan for a month to make a series of short 16mm films, often shot in slow-motion. This film, shown in continuous loop, has a run-time of just under 3 minutes, and is presented without sound. It captures a traditional Shisa (combination of a dog and lion from Okinawan mythology) animated by an invisible person.

Photography (Photography)

San Pedro is a seaside city, part of the Los Angeles Harbor, sitting on the edge of a channel. California Stories: Attempt to correlate social class with elevation above main harbor channel (San Pedro, July 1975) (1973–2011) is a series of coupled gelatin silver prints that show the artist using his hand to measure the elevation of various pieces of real estate, ranging from a manicured mansion to a ramshackle beach house. A direct equation becomes evident between the social strata these homes represent and the height at which the artist holds his hand.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Lara uses things readily at hand to create objects and situations that interrogate the processes of art and the spectrum of roles that art and artists play in society. To these ends, she has used furniture, projections, photographs, clothing, and even people as her materials. A reflection on how the production of meaning itself takes place in the manufacturing of things is embodied in wooden hand chairs, a crafty Indonesian version of the iconic Pedro Friedeberg 1960s Pop design.

Photography (Photography)

The photographic series Tonatiuh (The Son of the Sun) by Juan Brenner is an in-depth visual study of current Guatemalan society from the perspective of miscegenation and the incalculable consequences of the Spanish conquest. Establishing Spanish conquistador Pedro de Alvarado as a central figure, not only in the conquest of Guatemala, but also in the formation of a complex, segregated society, Brenner proposes a series of images that re-establish the lens through which to consider both a historical and contemporary Guatemala. Tonatiuh is a visual essay on the state of a country on the verge of failure and its incapacity to address its own history and learn from it.

Mario Garcia Torres films a game of Charades among professional actors guessing the former North Korean dictator’s favorite Hollywood films. Indeed rather surprisingly Kim seems to have had a huge collection of Western videos and he published a book called “On the art of the Cinema” in 1973. As the final acknowledgments indicate, Garcia Torres’s work was produced following in depth research, consulting information given by director Shin Sang-ok who has been kidnapped by Kim in 1978, as well as Jerrold Post (The George Washington University) and Timothy Savage (Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainable Development).

Photography (Photography)

Stretching between San Pedro and the beach in Altata, Sinaloa, there is a 40 km road where there are three invisible borders controlled by rivalling armed groups. There is a price to pay for crossing these territories. This series of 21 photographs by Teresa Margolles, titled 40 Km , resemble snapshots of peaceful lands, but also bear witness to the reality lived by the local people in this area.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Cardón Cardinal by Patricia Esquivias is part of a series of video works in which the artist develops a narrative in front of her computer screen. In this work, the computer sits on a covered piano keyboard, and the reflection of the artist is sometimes visible on the black surface. Cardón Cardinal is a collage of references that revolve around the removal and displacement of a 46 foot tall Pachycereus pringlei , a type of giant cactus also known as a cardón , from Baja California, Mexico to Seville, Spain.