Film & Video (Film & Video)

Ecotone by Enar de Dios Rodríguez is a video work presented in six chapters, each beginning and ending with a one-sided telephone dialog with an informal, friendly and conversational tone, that leads quickly into complex philosophical subjects. The first chapter is an introduction, and the last is an epilogue, and both employ interfaces (a smartphone screen, and an optical illusion, respectively) to invite the viewer to make conceptual connections across the chapters. An “ecotone” is a region of transition between two biological communities.

Installation (Installation)

Aqua by Fernando Palma Rodríguez is an installation formed by four gourds and one movement detector that activates them. Once put in motion, the gourds open and close hinged hands that are cut from their bodies, catalyzing a sophisticated, choreographed conversation among them. Following Indigenous notions of personhood, Palma Rodríguez grants agency to ordinary objects and therefore the ability to relate to others—humans as well as non-humans.

Painting (Painting)

Abel Rodríguez’s precise, botanical illustrations are drawn from memory and knowledge acquired by oral traditions. They are the visions of someone who sees the potential of plants as food, material for dwellings and clothing, and for use in sacred rites. Terraza Alta V is part of a series of drawings that track the changing appearance and life of an area identified as Terraza Alta.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

This is a poignant and humorous self portrait that turns the camera on the artist’s own physical inability to cry. With non-stop cascades of “tears” coming down from his eyes, the impact of the work is in the contrast between the still image of the artist and the constant movement of the waterfalls flowing down. An image of impotency, it is also a beautiful “moving picture” in the formal sense.

Installation (Installation)

This is not in Spanish looks at the ways in which the Chinese population in Mexico navigates the daily marginalization they encounter there. The neon translates as “this is not in Spanish,” making reference to both the famous Rene Magritte painting “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” as well as signs posted in the windows of Chinese establishments in Mexico.

Painting (Painting)

Jorge de León most well-known work was a radical gesture, and one of his earliest artworks: in his 2000 performance, The Circle, de León sewed his own mouth closed as a protest against the silencing of citizens in the face of social corruption. His Cristal series is more demure, but follows a similar theme. In these works, delicate, web-like lines emerge against dark backgrounds, creating orbs of negative space, pitch black.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Adam is an emblematic work within Jean-Charles de Quillacq’s oeuvre. The artist has created a number of pieces entitled Adam , referring to original man, incarnated in multiple objects at once. Materially, Adam is a fluorescent yellow walking rope with an epoxy coating on one side, rendering the structure rigid, demonstrative of his sculptural practice which is both conceptual and sensual.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Javier M. Rodriguez’s Going Round and Round in a Line ST (12m) is a sculptural composition made of the simplest materials—a single tape measure and metal rivets. The rivets lock the tape measure in its contorted shape, bending in angles to create a geometric abstraction. The piece hangs simply from the ceiling, at times rotating around, its shape changing with our point of view.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

davi de jesus do nascimento’s earthy paintings, from the series sorvedouro , recall his memories as an essentially organic matter. Watercolor painting carries water as its foundational element and was the first technique that the artist applied to base his painting research on the river. He used to dip the brush on the prow of the boats: “I realized that the water is in deep dialogue with the flows of the river that I descend”.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Superb production values and special effects that in the hands of Miguel Angel Rios do not get in the way or distracts from the content and deep essay of this work. The shadow of Modernity represented via a clear cube floats over and through a barren landscape in Latin America. Juxtaposing the corrupt politics of the land, with the artist’s struggles and questioning of the effects and burden of influence of Modernity.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

For Piedras Blancas , arguably his most ambitious and visually arresting video to date, Miguel Angel Ríos made 3,000 “piedras” out of a concrete/stone composite. The video is shot in arid, mountainous locations in Mexico (his adopted country) and Argentina (his home country). Over several months, Ríos scouted locations for natural-worn tributaries where he eventually allowed these balls to then thunder down the mountain.

Photography (Photography)

Lenora de Barros’s poetics are known for setting in motion an intimate relationship between image and the written word. This was precisely one of the questions raised while producing the photographs that compose Poema , one of de Barros’s first and most iconic visual poems. The work consists of a sequence of six black and white photographs where language acts in a performative movement with the typewriter, forging a connection between word and image.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Nuevo Dragon City is a reenactment of a historical event from 1927 in which six Chinese were either trapped or voluntarily hid themselves inside a building in northern Mexico. Working with this unsettled mystery, De La Torre’s video inquires into the historical and continuing tensions between Chinese and Mexicans. As such, Nuevo Dragon City depicts a symbolic act of self-entrapment in which six untrained actors of Chinese descent silently blockade themselves inside in an empty Tijuana storefront.

Painting (Painting)

Caetano de Almeida’s abstract compositions in acrylic use delicately-rendered swirls of overlapping, colorful lines. Intersecting at regular angles within six bubbles, these thread-like lines spiral chaotically outward once they leave these spheres of order. De Almeida’s abstractions don’t imply randomness and chaos, the way much abstract painting might, but rather seem tied to algorithms, precision, and the networked realities of the contemporary moment.

Installation (Installation)

Following a series of related works, Brutalismo Americano by Marlon de Azambuja is a site-specific sculptural installation produced during the artist’s residency at Kadist, San Francisco in 2017. Treating the city as an object of attention, de Azambuja collected building materials from the surrounding area over a period of ten days to conceive of an architecture in situ. The work is not meant to mimic any of San Francisco’s own architecture, or to be a maquette or portrait of the cityscape, but instead a singular, constructive gesture.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Originally commissioned for the 32nd Sao Paulo Biennial, the film Estás vendo coisas (You are seeing things) depicts the subculture of Brega music, a fusion of American Hip Hop, Brazilian techno and Caribbean reggaeton that emerged in North Eastern Brazil over the last decade. Part anthropological documentary and part musical the film speaks about the realities of Brazil with its enormous social and economic tensions.

Installation (Installation)

The Absolute Restoration of All Things is a collaboration by artist Miguel Fernández de Castro and anthropologist Natalia Mendoza. For this project, Fernández de Castro and Mendoza researched the 2014 court case that shut down Penmont Mining’s operations in the middle of the Sonoran desert. The lawsuit was brought to court by the “ejidatarios” (communal land holders) of El Bajío, Sonora, who claimed that their territory was illegally occupied and exploited, causing an irrevocable environmental impact on their land.