Ghost Infrastructures: refuges, archives, and echoes in Tijuana
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Reading time

8 min

Tijuana's artistic production has developed less as a stable scene and more as a succession of networks, spaces, and communities capable of reorganizing and reappearing in different forms.

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There are many ways to name a city. On Ingrid Hernández at the Centro de la Imagen
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Reading time

6 min

There are many ways to name the city where the homeland supposedly begins, and Ingrid Hernández has found a few of them. They are refreshing ways that inscribe themselves in and at the same time run against the grain of a certain documentary tradition in Mexican photography. "Tijuana, where my family's restaurant was. Tijuana, home to nearly 500 active maquiladoras. Tijuana, where my daughter was born. Tijuana, 300,000 daily crossings through the garita [border crossing]. Tijuana, with more homicides than most of the country. Tijuana, where I grew up alongside my grandmother. Tijuana, always peripheral, first city of Latin America."¹

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Where's the trick? María Ezcurra at Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil
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Reading time

4 min

I was walking hand in hand with my mother the first time I visited Líneas de fuga by María Ezcurra at the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil. It was a Saturday around lunchtime and the room was empty except for the large, strident textile bodies in tension, the pile of shoes flying like a flock of birds, the house made of suitcases, and the quinceañera dresses suspended in waiting. The show is Ezcurra's first retrospective and caught my attention from the start for the versatility of formats and thematic axes that run through gender, migration, ecology, and the symbolic languages of materials. It is in this last point, however, where I find the genius of her work and the capacity to evoke sensations so personal and situated that they captivate and disturb at once.

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Extra Time. On "Al balón le vale m*dres" at La Quiñonera
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Reading time

6 min

The Football World Cup in Mexico was sold to us on the promise of modernization and national celebration. While the latter is still underway, rather than projecting stability and prosperity for the country, it has thrown into sharp relief the fractures and griefs we have been building up as a society in recent years. In that spirit, the current collective exhibition at La Quiñonera, Anti FIFA Fan Fest: Al balón le vale m*dres [Anti-FIF4 Fan Fest: The ball doesn’t give a d*mn]—organized by the collective MalPaís and curated by Patricio García Formentí, Mario Stoylov, and Ana Sofía Esteva—uses the World Cup as a starting point to dissect the political and social symptoms that the spectacle attempts to conceal by all means available.

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Tears and Laughter in the Pavilion of Happiness: It's a Small World After All. Josué Mejía at Proyectos Monclova Gallery
Anachrony of Curse. On "Los grupos y otras revueltas artísticas" at the MUAC
Percussion and Abrasion. On "Donde terminan las montañas" by Cynthia Gutiérrez en Galería CURRO
Smuggling Dissent: "Atravesar el lago", Casa del Lago UNAM
Embodying the Map. Interview with Michelle Sáenz Burrola
Baby Eyes. Julián Madero at Proyecto Mono Rojo
Flat things whose way of unfolding is standing up. Christian Camacho at Galería Karen Huber
Headstrong Artists Sprout from the Desert: A Conversation with Curator Mayté Miranda on the Mexicali Art Week
When Does a Work of Art End? No-Objetualismos at Museo Universitario del Chopo
Pain, Materiality, and Bodies in "¿Cómo salimos?" by Teresa Margolles at Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey
Attention Fixed on Mutation: On “Deseos Diferentes” at Museo Cabañas
Interview with Patricia Conde: Photography as a Medium for Storytelling
Aurora Pellizzi at La Tallera: Constant Surprise
Another Breath Inhabits the Air. Interview with Tania Pérez Córdova on "El aire, hoy" at Travesía Cuatro
On Theatrical Spatiality in “Drama mexicano” by Yvonne Venegas at Lateral
Alloy–Contradiction. On "Withdrawal" by Tomás Díaz Cedeño at PEANA