A New Vision for Mexico’s Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey

Within the heart of Monterrey, close to its historic quarter and throughout from its metropolis corridor and most important cathedral, stands a brunt orange postmodern constructing by famend Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta. Its sharp strains and stucco end nod to conventional Mexican structure, contrasting with the close by rolling hills. Accomplished in 1991, it’s residence to the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey (MARCO), which for the previous three a long time has introduced worldwide up to date artwork to this northern Mexican metropolis, the nation’s industrial capital. Notable exhibitions touring from different museums embrace solos for Annette Messager, Ernesto Neto, and Ron Mueck.

Because the arrival of its govt director Taiyana Pimentel in 2019, the museum has been present process a radical shift. Born in Havana, she first started visiting Monterrey within the mid-’90s, the place she met the artist collective marcelaygina (lively between 1997 and 2010), whose performances imagined different social buildings. It was in contrast to something Pimentel had seen in Mexico Metropolis, the place she had just lately moved.

“Right here [in Monterrey], there have been sturdy political positions linked to points of sophistication, race, and wages, which made me query whether or not the ‘North’ might be a big departure from the artwork scene within the nation’s heart,” she just lately informed ARTnews. 

This attitude, she believes, varieties the muse of her curatorial program at MARCO, which facilities on showcasing the inventive manufacturing of northern Mexico, like a current exhibition centered on images from Nuevo León, alongside the work of artists with worldwide renown who had not had vital museum exhibitions in Mexico, like Mario García Torres, Miguel Calderón, Pedro Reyes, and Damián Ortega, who’ve all had solo reveals at MARCO since she took over.

“Pimentel shattered the executive limitations that had lengthy hindered the presentation of many artists who’ve been … exhibiting primarily exterior of Mexico,” stated Ortega, whose mid-career survey on the museum opened in 2023. “I actually had not exhibited my work in my very own nation—it’s akin to a author by no means publishing of their native language.”

Pimentel’s imaginative and prescient for a brand new MARCO additionally contains an emphasis on displaying the work of girls artists, with exhibitions for marcelaygina, Melanie Smith, Sofía Taboas, and Helen Escobedo, in addition to its present solo for Teresa Serrano and an upcoming retrospective on Teresa Margolles. Renovated exhibitions areas have been made into venture areas for mid-career and rising artists, like Aurora Pellizzi and Adeline de Monseignat. And in line with MARCO’s roots, Pimentel has additionally centered on strengthening the museum’s worldwide connections, whether or not by way of partnerships with museums in Texan cities like Dallas, Houston, and El Paso, on the opposite aspect of the border from Nuevo León, or with an establishment just like the Dia Artwork Basis in New York. The latter collaboration introduced a significant present by Dan Flavin to Monterrey, which introduced greater than 119,000 guests to the museum, by far essentially the most visited throughout her tenure.

“Exhibiting artists that for some cause had not been analyzed served as one of many cracks within the building of exhibition histories in Mexico, which allowed me to rapidly enter and place myself within the nice discourse of museums in Mexico,” Pimentel informed ARTnews.

The museum’s current thought-provoking exhibition, “Nuevo León: El futuro no está escrito” (Nuevo León: The Future is Not Written), is the newest instance of Pimentel’s revitalization of MARCO. Curated by Mauricio Maillé and Ariadna Ramonetti Liceaga, this exhibition introduced a various array of photographic views from 10 artists and one collective with ties to Nuevo León. As an alternative of a monolithic presentation, the exhibition unfolded as a collection of intimate solo reveals, providing a extra nuanced examination of this dynamic area by every artist’s distinctive imaginative and prescient of it. Legendary Monterrey-based photographer Aristeo Jiménez severed as a place to begin.

In “El futuro no está escrito,” which closed on February 23, the contrasting realities that coexist inside Nuevo León, from the city sprawl of Monterrey to the rugged fantastic thing about the Sierra Madre, have been on full show. The exhibition opened, for instance, with the work of Jiménez, who documented the nightlife and social realities of the town’s neighborhoods, together with La Coyotera and the historic Tierra y Libertad, based by landowners who had migrated from San Luis Potosi and later the positioning of some of the essential well-liked leftist actions in Latin America. Imbued with a powerful sense of social justice, Jiménez’s photos supply a essential perspective on the challenges confronted by marginalized communities, reminiscent of undergound subculture, LGBTQ+ folks, intercourse staff, and people battling habit.

Additional alongside have been Yvonne Venegas’s photos of the opulent world of San Pedro Garza García, a suburb of Monterrey that’s among the many wealthiest municipalities in Latin America. The pairing of those two photographers revealed the stark social and financial disparities that exist throughout the area.

“[The exhibition] shouldn’t be in regards to the metropolis we would like, however in regards to the metropolis we have now, with all its issues and specific conditions,” cocurator Ramonetti Liceaga informed ARTnews. “It asks us to consider the longer term and the way we are able to enhance our present actuality. In fact, it’s an exhibition that tries to confront uncomfortable truths.”

A kind of uncomfortable truths is the grueling labor practices of globalization. The collective Estética Unisex affords a poignant critique of those circumstances by way of their portraits of staff at massive comfort retailer chains, like OXXO and 7-Eleven. Their lens focuses on the younger folks navigating the precariousness of the gig financial system. In a single set of photos, staff nap whereas nonetheless carrying their uniforms, whereas one other reveals the employees, nonetheless of their uniforms, in dancerly poses out on the streets. Equally, Oswaldo Ruiz, who was born and raised in Monterrey, meticulously paperwork the affect of cement manufacturing on the town’s surrounding panorama in his collection “Todo lo sólido” (2018–24). For six years, he chronicled the quite a few quarries within the area—lots of which have already been deserted—and their subsequent environmental degradation. The pursuit of manufacturing what is taken into account the very best cement on this planet typically overshadows the ecological value. The wealth generated in Monterrey shouldn’t be with out its penalties, these artists say.

“El futuro no está escrito” served not solely as a mirrored image on Nuevo León’s current however, as with MARCO’s new path as an entire, a strong reminder that narratives rising from the periphery are important to understanding the broader cultural panorama and shaping its future.

Pimentel questioned whether or not the North’s distance created a blind spot for the nation’s heart, ensuing within the unrecognized and misunderstood nature of its distinctive practices. She added, “The northern perspective has been essentially the most compelling curatorial argument, enabling me to develop a program rooted within the area and reflective of its distinctive id.”