Luis Frías

Arte Expuesto presents Manilargos: Danzas de agua, an exhibition of artwork by Luis Frías, on display throughout September on different panoramic screens across the city.

In 2022, I asked myself, “How can I participate in solving the water crisis in Nuevo León through artistic creation?” I began to carry out awareness-raising activities, criticism, and even rituals to make it rain, such as dances at the dam, drawings, photomontages, interventions in public spaces, manifestos, etc. Curiously, after some of these actions, it rained. This inaugurated the project Contemporary Rituals to Make It Rain, which, rather than being a naive superstition, involves an arduous emotional and artistic quest to engage with other forms of knowledge that perhaps can only be approached through art.

The exhibition Danzas de agua aims to share seven slogans of “dances to make rain,” placed on panoramic screens over the Monterrey metropolitan area as a collective performance exercise to invoke rain. The pieces include my characters, the Manilargos, as a metaphor for incorporating knowledge about water, “dancing over the city” as an invitation to reflect on water sustainability and the power of art to transform our sense of reality, and why not, collectively perform dances to make rain.

— Luis Frías