Sometimes, the only thing we need to rest from a busy week is a good dose of art, the kind of cultural showing that leaves you lost in thought and analyzing its message for a while, the kind that is strong enough so your everyday problems are erased and which inspire dialogue, in addition to inviting us to see beyond the mundane and which wake up inside ourselves, the need to know, learn, and do further research on what they propose. MUAC always makes us reflect and this time, their exhibition offer is something nobody should miss.
Ai Weiwei (through October 6th)
Resetting memories
Through this exhibition, the artist presents the traumas caused by China’s and Mexico’s experiences, with the purpose of creating social memories. He talks about the complex negotiations between the old and the new, the restlessness before the destruction of the cultural heritage, and the relationship that emerges among ancestors, which can damage the future and create violence against the generations to come.
One bet the showing fights for is the construction of memories as an imaginary tie that links us to our ancestors and creates the obligation to protect and teach the young.
The idea emerges in 2016, when Ai Weiwei visited Mexico and started a project about the loss of the future and the shock this represents, through a documentary and a series of portraits, made with Lego bricks, exploring the consequences of the missing 43 students from the Rural Normal School in Ayotzinapa, which took place in 2014. This blends with the Wang Family Ancestral Hall (2015), wooden temple of the Ming dynasty, which records the disappearance of the Chinese cultural heritage caused by the violence of the revolution, the loss of the traditional rural society, and antiques trade. This 400 year-old ruin is the example of the combination between past and future, in an emotional and complex way.
Jan Hendrix (through September 22nd)
Landfall
This presentation is the artist’s first retrospective, showing his technical and visual research on graphic’s contemporary possibilities, while showing the importance of nature in life.
A construction over the sudden bridge between two different cultures, the Mexican and the Dutch (his nationality). As conceptual artist, Hendrix is an important piece for serigraphy, not only in its practice and in the search for possible techniques, but also as a producer of the work of multiple artists and transmitter and inventor of a wide range of technical repertoires related to the use of paper and ink.
Jan Hendrix came to Mexico in 1975, and since then he has become a key personality for the art scene. He arrived with a scholarship from the Dutch Ministry of Cultural Affairs to work with the Mexican landscape, and since his arrival, he has been focused on works inspired by the traveler and the naturist, by adding a plot of visual experiences.
For the past years, he has created art surfaces for a series of constructions and contemporary spaces in collaboration with architects. He also produces art books with writers and poets like Seamus Heaney, Gabriel García Márquez, and Hans van de Waarsenburg; his purpose, to unite Mexico’s and Holland’s visual and literary cultures.
