AN EXHIBITION THAT CHALLENGES CONVENTIONAL VISUAL NARRATIVES AT MAMBO

Viceversa is the exhibition that will culminate the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá (MAMBO) and will be dedicated to the Museum's collection. This exhibition is the result of an in-depth analysis and contemporary review of the Museum's Collection. In this sense, Viceversa suggests alternate interpretations that challenge conventional visual narratives by adopting a "reverse" approach while proposing unusual connections, visual and conceptual counterpoints.

Viceversa, unlike traditional exhibitions, is not based on a specific theme, group, or historical period. Instead, it presents more than 400 works by artists from different generations, which are displayed throughout the Museum's four floors as a symphony under the axes of Memory, Identity and Dissonance.

Memory examines the social and cultural basis of the collection, highlighting thematic concerns that recur across different genres and periods, turning the analysis of the past into a critical tool to address the present. For its part, the Identity section explores the uniqueness of the Museum's collection, rooted in its diversity and connected to its social and cultural context, which has influenced its history and development. Finally, the Dissonances section introduces alternative perspectives and interpretations that explore social issues, such as race, gender, identity, and political crises, challenging prevailing cultural narratives by offering a cross-cultural critique through works that pose counterpoints, rhetorical questions, and revisionist statements. In this way, the exhibition frames the Museum as a living organism, full of symbolic relationships, stories to be told, and possibilities to be shaped.

According to Eugenio Viola, chief curator of MAMBO, "Viceversa shows a collection of works that move away from the traditional conventions of art history as we know it, instead intentionally linking diverse histories. It adheres to a non-systematic and anarchic proportion: the museum's collection is presented as an open process that seeks a critical rewriting and proposes a way of exhibiting itself as a diversity of experiences, functioning as a laboratory of imaginative research and production."

Viceversa is a visual experience that goes beyond the past and the present, the local and the international, presenting a constellation of works that connect to a wide range of narratives. Acknowledging the Museum's history and legacy, the exhibition seeks to challenge the narrative convention of art history, while presenting the collection as a process open to joint and contextualized critical rewriting that opens the possibility for a multiplicity of experiences, research and artistic productions as part of the constant construction of modern and contemporary art.