Editor’s Be aware: This story is a part of Newsmakers, a brand new ARTnews sequence the place we interview the movers and shakers who’re making change within the artwork world.
Mexico’s TONO Competition, which focuses on time-based artwork, opened final week for its third version. Hosted in Mexico Metropolis and the close by metropolis of Puebla, the competition brings collectively 50 artists from 22 nations to stage video installations, performances, music occasions, and screenings. This yr’s competition unfolds throughout main venues within the space, together with the Museo Anahuacalli, Ex Teresa Arte Precise, and Museo Universitario del Chopo, UNAM, with nightly music programming extending past gallery partitions.
The competition, which runs till April 6, is the brainchild of Sam Ozer, a curator, author, and producer. Based mostly between Mexico, New York, and Paris, Ozer has held curatorial and programming positions on the Museum of Trendy Artwork, MoMA PS1, and Zona Maco, and arranged tasks at galleries and museum in Athens, Los Angeles, Mexico Metropolis, Milan, and New York.
The 2025 version of TONO expands its worldwide attain, teaming up with MoMA movie curator Sophie Cavoulacos to display brief movies from New York’s Nineteen Eighties artist collectives, in addition to a up to date program with Valentin Noujaïm. TONO has additionally partnered with Lisbon’s Gulbenkian Trendy Artwork Heart to current works from this yr’s featured artists in its H BOX gallery. Anticipate new and current works from artists like Korakrit Arunanondchai and Alex Gvojic, Saodat Ismailova, Luiz Roque, and Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, in addition to new commissioned performances by Eartheater and Freeka Tet, amongst others.
ARTnews spoke with Ozer about TONO’s origin story and the right way to construct an viewers in an artwork world that’s more and more inundated with occasions.
This interview has been edited and condensed for readability and concision.
What was the spark that created TONO?
The mission itself truly grew out of me residing in Mexico Metropolis and dealing as an unbiased curator with totally different museums. A whole lot of the government-funded museums right here in Mexico used to have their very own inside festivals, particularly for sound artwork. Across the early 2000s, authorities funding for the humanities in Mexico turned extra sophisticated and loads of these establishments couldn’t maintain these occasions. On the identical time, I used to be doing this type of programming and it was clear there was such a starvation for this work within the metropolis. Audiences had been actually eager to show up. So I had this concept for a competition that linked totally different museums within the metropolis, additionally with a public area when it is smart for a mission.
It was need-based. You noticed the viewers after which introduced the establishments to them.
Precisely. I simply began reaching out to museums saying, “Hey, would you be curious about collaborating on any such programming?” All those I reached out to—the Museo de Arte Moderno, Ex Teresa Arte Precise, which could be very historic for for sound artwork, Laboratorio Arte Alameda, which could be very historic for video artwork—all of them mentioned sure. By historic, I imply these museums had been discovered within the ’90s and had a wealthy historical past with time-based artwork. The primary version of the TONO competition had over 30 artists and collectives displaying throughout eight museums and music venues within the metropolis.
Whereas the mission was impressed the competition format that establishments I’ve labored with earlier than used to have right here in Mexico Metropolis, for me, TONO was at all times about taking a worldwide method to any such work and making a construction in which you’ll actually make these tasks occur by pairing totally different establishments inside these world networks. Artists who work with the shifting picture, artists who make sound artwork or efficiency artwork—they typically battle to supply their tasks. It’s an important assist working with establishments who can assume collaboratively of the way to fund them.
Sam Ozer. Photograph by Alberto Bustamante.
Is it tough to seek out an viewers due to how shut it’s to Zona Maco? Presumably a lot of the worldwide crowd who got here to Mexico for Maco [which ran in Mexico City from February 5-9] have left.
They’re very several types of tasks. Maco is a business honest. TONO, when it comes to the the texture of it, is far more just like the Performa Biennial in New York, mixed with Berlin Biennial. Now we have video installations and exhibitions throughout museum hours after which, at night time, there are stay efficiency and screenings. The viewers is unquestionably heavy on folks right here in Mexico Metropolis, however we do have folks coming from across the nation like Monterrey, Guadalajara, and Oaxaca Metropolis.
This yr truly I’ve like 10 to twenty curators from museums in Los Angeles, Munich, and London which might be coming for analysis. I’m actually enthusiastic about that as a result of the programming of TONO could be very worldwide. There’s positively a concentrate on Mexican and Latin American artists. For instance this yr we’ve a serious fee with Bárbara Sánchez-Kane, who’s Mexican, and Jota Mombaça who’s Brazilian. However then we additionally had Arthur Jafa’s first presentation in Latin America within the first version of TONO. Ali Cherri’s first presentation in Mexico was in TONO final yr. It’s attention-grabbing for native and worldwide curators to see a lot of these pairings.
Additionally, Mexico is such an attention-grabbing area for the artists to current their work. The structure and museums I work with are so distinctive, which affords artists one thing actually attention-grabbing to play with. Bear in mind, the Joshua Serafin work that went viral on the Venice Biennale, the video during which they had been dancing in that lovely blue sort of primordial goo? We confirmed it at TONO a number of months earlier than the Biennale at this wonderful museum in Chapultepec Park, Dolores Cárcamo, and the efficiency occurred in entrance of a mosaic of Tlaloc, the Aztec god of water, which was designed by Diego Rivera. So it’s like these wonderful areas that’s actually enjoyable for artists to work with, after which for worldwide audiences, it’s enjoyable for them to see work in a setting with which they’re not so acquainted.
These worldwide relationships that you just’re constructing require loads of journey. Each for the works that wind up at TONO, but additionally for you personally.
Journey is a number of issues. It’s seeing new artists and seeing the exhibitions they’ve finished. It’s fundraising, which is a giant a part of it, after which it’s additionally talking with establishments as a result of I would like as many audiences as attainable to have the ability to see the tasks. Final yr we co-commissioned Gabriel Massan: Continuity Flaws: Rumors of a Leak, with the Serpentine, which first confirmed in London, then got here to Mexico, after which went to Brazil. Then, this yr, two of the performances are co-commissioned with museums in Europe: Jota Mombaça’s wonderful new efficiency was co-produced with Wiels and can later tour Brussels. And a fee of Bárbara Sánchez-Kane, co-produced with MUDAM, will tour Luxembourg in late spring. It’s necessary to be out there. Following up with folks in particular person continues to be simply so necessary, no matter how a lot we’ve grown used to utilizing Zoom and WhatsApp. Face-to-face is simply nonetheless so necessary, as is knowing how a present feels in an area for what it could possibly imply for a particular work.
What do you see for TONO’s future?
An enormous a part of TONO is collaborating with bigger establishments, and I’d prefer to assume we’ve been pushing different museums to embrace that technique of working. So many establishments are financially struggling, whether or not it’s personal donors being extra cautious with how they’re allocating their funds … or governments altering their plans. I actually imagine that co-commissioning a chunk, for each establishment, means not solely that you just’re sharing the prices but additionally enabling a wider viewers to see it. Isn’t that what we’re all making an attempt to do?
