MACHAMA

MACHAMA

Always surrounded by women, Diego Rivera admired their power of fertility and female wisdom: in short, he loved them. That attraction is palpable in his native art collection, on display at the Anahuacalli.

The “pyramid” -as it is known to many- is a construction of the 20th century inspired by pre-Hispanic architecture, the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, and functionalist aesthetics. It was raised in stone to house the creations of ancient civilizations.

This building, so male in structure and yet, female in its entrails, provides the ideal framework to display the art of Adelia Sayeg. Not unlike the Anahuacalli, Adelia’s objects commute between the vegetable and the mineral. Diego, like Adelia, is a meticulous, obsessive observer of nature. Both are compulsive creative artists who feverishly work with a profusion of elements that may be observed in ceramics as ancient as the pastillage from Teotihuacán.

Adelia’s works could very well be the vestiges of an Amazonian settlement or the utensils of a matron who carries water across a deserted post-apocalyptic landscape. Tantamount to archeological remains of the future, her pottery acts as a tool to show the beauty inherent in ruins and collapse.

These works are objects and at the same time, places. They are landscapes, labyrinths and miniature cities filled with hanging elements, forces in constant motion, gears, weights and counterweights. Adelia’s art toys with the notion of equilibrium.
On the other hand, her works also possess entrails of abundant female sexuality. Machama (old wise woman) is not only a tribute to the fertile and powerful women in the artist’s family tree, but also an offering to femininity, the ancestral wisdom of women that empowers both the grandmothers in her family and those of a more universal lineage. Adelia Sayeg was selected by the Anahuacalli because she restores nature’s sacred meaning. Machama recreates the duality our ancestors believed in, one that Diego drew sustenance from as well.

Adelia Sayeg (1962, CDMX)

Over the course of her career, Sayeg has participated in over 90 exhibitions, including individual shows held in Mexico, the United States, and various countries in Europe and Asia. She has participated in the Florence Biennale, the Latin American Biennale in New York, and on two occasions, in the Utilitarian Pottery Biennale of the Museo Franz Mayer in Mexico City. Her most recent exhibitions were 50ydos at the Museo Textil de Oaxaca (MTO) and Rituales at the Museo del Antiguo Arzobispado.

IDOLS BEFORE ALTARS

IDOLS BEFORE ALTARS

In Idols before Altars, the artist seeks to approach and comprehend the work of communities neighboring the Museo Anahuacalli. In this offering may be observed the participation of La Candelaria, a local community that completed carpets of sawdust featuring the serpent, an element and form that is repeated continuously throughout the collection, and the representation of the souls of loved ones through the baking of bread. Likewise, the people of San Pablo Tepetlapa created large arches and pathways of flowers. The work presented by both communities conveys traditions that have been sustained for over 50 years in Offerings to the Dead.

This contemporary display brings together over 60 works inside and outside the Museum, playfully interacting with space and intervening the pre-Hispanic works to create a dialogue between pre-Hispanic and contemporary Mexico. The artist places halos on the artworks in the collection in reference to the idols that in centuries past, were concealed behind the saints; on this occasion, the pre-Hispanic works that form part of Diego Rivera’s collection are found in the foreground.

Romero designed the skulls, candles, and paper cut-outs that adorn the altar to Diego Rivera, as well as a route of sawdust carpets that flow across the first floor, evoking the path that the migrants transit when they go from place to place. Moreover, we will be able to see intervened pneumatic tires as a constant element in the work of the artist, creating Tzompantlis that form part of the celebration.

THE XITLE VOLCANO SCHOOL OF SCIENCES AND ARTISANRY

Xitle Volcano School of Sciences
and Artisanry

When Diego Rivera began construction of the Anahuacalli, he originally planned for the Museum to form part of a broader project, a City for the Arts. Undertaken by the muralist from 1945 to 1950, this City contemplated the edification of other museums, as well as squares and spaces for workshops and schools that would benefit artisans and artists alike. The architecture and design of the site were to be similar to those of the Anahuacalli itself: modern and realist – that is to say, inspired by the original buildings of the Americas. Moreover, the construction of the complex was to remain sensitive to its natural surroundings, taking advantage of a landscape characterized by the singular rock formations left behind by the eruption of the Xitle Volcano south of Mexico City. Unfortunately, Rivera passed away before the museum was concluded and the work was completed by his daughter, the architect Ruth Rivera, and Juan O’Gorman.

In the The Xitle Volcano School for Sciences and Artisanry, Marco Rountree falls back on the collage approach evident in a great deal of his work, focusing especially on a concept of vital importance in the development of modern art and architecture in Mexico: the integration of the visual arts. His interventions seek to open up a dialogue and wield a direct influence over the architecture, curatorship and collection of the Museum. Some of these interventions refer to certain aspects of the original project that the Anahuacalli formed part of, such as the schools and workshops that never came to pass, or the presence of artisanry. Others use the volcanic rock to emphasize the relationship Rivera sought to sustain between landscape and architecture. Dilemmas related to the Museum collection and displays are also approached by Rountree. For example, the artist updates some of the curatorial resources from the 1960s, the decade when the Museum was inaugurated, while at the same time underlining the connection between the aesthetics of pre-Colombian art (mainly Western Mexico) and those of folk art or caricature – relationships that have been explored by figures such as Salvador Toscano, Paul Westheim, or Adolfo Best Maugard. In this manner, the series of interventions and sculptures that comprise The Xitle Volcano School of Sciences and Artisanry, rather than exhaustively delving into a single aspect related to the Anahuacalli and its history, offer myriad insights into this singular project of Rivera’s, both in terms of what exists and what was never successfully accomplished.

Marco Rountree

A visual artist who lives and works in Mexico City, Rountree defines his praxis as free experimentation through any drawing technique available to him. Rountree uses drawing, sculpture, installation, video and interventions in architectural spaces to explore the concept of decoration, particularly in the resignifying of everyday objects through their manipulation and representation. His work has appeared in individual and group shows at the Museo de Arte Querétaro (Querétano, Mexico), Jardin Botanico Culiacan (Sinaloa, Mexico), Museo de Arte Moderno (Mexico City, Mexico), the second Poly/Graphic Triennial (San Juan, Puerto Rico), Fundación Jumex (Mexico City, Mexico), etc.

Daniel Garza Usabiaga

Garca Usabiaga holds a doctorate in History and Art Theory from the University of Essex in the United Kingdom. He completed his postdoctoral research at the Institute of Aesthetic Research of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. As a historian, he has worked on research projects for publications and exhibitions in Mexico and the United States; for example, at the Institute of Aesthetic Investigations/Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo, Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Getty Institute, and Pomona College in California. His essays have been published in books and catalogs by the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, the Getty Institute, the Modern Art Museum of Warsaw, the Contemporáneo Reina Sofía in Madrid, Pomona College, Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin, and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

As a curator of exhibitions with historic and contemporary content, Garza Usabiaga has completed over 40 exhibitions in Mexico and the United States; he has been the curator of the Museo de Arte Moderno and head curator of the Museo Universitario del Chopo in Mexico City. In 2011, he received the Premio Bellas Artes para Crítica de Artes Plásticas Luis Cardoza y Aragón for his research on Mathias Goeritz, which gave rise to his book, Mathias Goeritz y la arquitectura emocional. Una revisión crítica 1952-1968 (2012). His latest book, El gran malentendido. Wolfgang Paalen en México y el surrealismo disidente de la revista DYN (INBA/MACG) was published in late 2018. Garza Usabiaga has been a professor of the graduate program in Art History of the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado “La Esmeralda”.

Alma Saladin

A graduate of the Master’s program in Curatorial Studies of La Sorbonne in Paris, France and the Independent Study Program of New York in the United States, Alma Saladin is co-founder of the curatoriale heiwata platform and various collectives, such as: Agence Surfaces, Lineas Rouges, and PROJECT BASEMENT. She is currently the artistic and curatorial director of guadalajara90210, a gallery based in Guadalajara, Mexico. She is completing a visual and praxis research project regarding the body (or bodies) in motion and conceptualizing exhibitions in contemporary art, as well as multidisciplinary events.

COORDINATES

COORDINATES

Coordinates by Jesper Just, curated by Anissa Touati, is a show that exhibits the Danish artist’s work in Mexico for the first time.

For Coordinates, Jesper Just chose the Isthmus of Tehuantepece, Oaxaca where the Muxe1community resides and where the Bowman Expeditions were carried out by the U.S. Army to explore and map the region.

The artist centers on the culture of the Isthmus communities as well as the territorial conflict confronted by the inhabitants of that zone who struggle for the autonomy of their land.

In keeping with the idea of “the need to represent social difference in a spatial form,”2 Coordinates exhibits two video installations: the first occurs on the esplanade outside the Museum: as if a discovery had just taken place, a preventive archeological canopy is found before the Anahuacalli, housing an installation and a video taken of the windy Zapotec landscape of Juchitán, in which snowflakes are juxtaposed with a ceremonial center. These points in motion may be interpreted as the coordinates on a map, not unlike those drawn up by the Bowman expeditions.
The second takes place in Diego Rivera’s Studio and establishes a direct connection to the name of the exhibition. In the video, Muxes may be seen embroidering, in keeping with their tradition. The movement of their needles composes a sound landscape that conveys both desire and a silent act of protest.

This rhythm becomes its own system; a pattern that dialogues with the collection of pre-Hispanic works housed by the Anahuacalli and the sketches by the muralist regarding the importance of the people’s struggle and Mexican culture.

The exhibition Coordinates coincides with the contemporary art fair Zona MACO, and may be visited from February 7 to April 15, 2018.

Jesper Just (1974)

Danish artist who works and resides in New York. He holds a degree from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Denmark and is represented by the Perrotin Gallery in France, the James Cohan Gallery in New York and the Nicolai Wallner Gallery in Copenhagen. He has toured the world with his contemporary art exhibitions, showing his work in video and performance at museums, art galleries and biennials. In the year 2016, he completed a residency at the Fundación Casa Wabi of Mexico City.

Anissa Touati (1981)

Co-director and independent French curator of the Chalet Society Gallery. In her curatorial practice, she attempts to forge bonds and interactions among artists and the exhibition space. She has participated in the projects Luna Park and Triangle Walks for the Basel Art Fair in Miami, Form Scratch at Art Basel and Yodeling Circus for the Venice Biennial. Likewise, she has curated exhibitions with independent galleries such as How Can I Forget You? at Perrotin Gallery (Paris), The Queen Falls at Galería OMR (Mexico City) and Atomic Romance at Galería Barro (Buenos Aires).

ELEMENTAL

ELEMENTAL

The Museo Anahuacalli combines nature and culture in a typically Mesoamerican fashion, acting as a dual physical reference between mountain and pyramid, volcano and temple. The rock that the building is made of comes from the lava produced by the eruption of Xitle, a volcano that destroyed Cuicuilco, one of many pre-Hispanic cities that preceded Mexico City. The root of its name, which conveys the now ambiguous sound of the Aztec word anahuac (surrounded by water), connotes the incorporation of early civilizations that flourished in this region before and after Xitle, in the southern part of what was once the lake-filled region of the Valley of Mexico; that fertile basin that is not actually a valley.

This strange and marvelous Museum created by Diego Rivera (geographically and culturally anahuac) contains an incredible compendium of what humanity -motivated by necessity and hope, love, fury and madness- is capable of forming on Earth. But Bosco Sodi: Elemental is not about this extraordinary material culture, rather, it is directed to the part of the museum that is prehistoric, anachronistic even: rock and heat, the volcano and its sublime beats. Succeeding in attaining beneath, before, beyond, and outside of history something more basic and fundamental: matiérisme paintings, volcanic rocks and cubes of clay by Sodi cut through the culture of matter like a river that rapidly flows across a floodplain. These are not products of the earth, but the presence of Earth itself.

Rivera’s genius lay in his ability to recognize in anahuac what the French call terroir, a unique combination of environmental features that constitute an identity that is inseparable from location: rock, earth, breath, blood, the quality of light. Sodi is interested in what will happen if we could be induced to allow the gears of our collective intellect to grind to a halt -if we were to bury our feet in the sand, turn our faces to the sun and pause to watch the lava flow. What, Sodi wonders, would it mean to simply be a part of where we are?

Bosco Sodi

Visual artist born in Mexico City in 1970, lived in Paris, Barcelona and Berlin before settling in New York, where he now resides and works. Sodi creates art that explores the areas in which nature and humanity combine and seek the beauty implicit in destruction. His art belongs to important collections on an international scale, and he has exhibited in museums and art galleries in different parts of the world: Germany, Spain, Japan, Italy, the United States and Mexico.

Dakin Hart

Curator of the Noguchi Museum in New York. He has previously participated in the curatorship of the exhibitions Sure, Sure. Davi Det Hompson: 1575-1991 at the Zieher Smith Gallery, Sculpture in So Many Words: Text Pieces 1960-1980 at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, and Picasso Exhibitions with John Richardson at the Gagosian Gallery in New York. Likewise, he has worked for the Museum of Fine Arts in San Francisco and for Montalvo Arts in California