BODIES & TERRITORY: A GROUP EXHIBITION AT JUMEX MUSEUM

Siluetas sobre maleza [Silhouettes on grass] is a group exhibition at Museo Jumex that explores the ways in which bodies exist and inhabit territory. Spanning several generations, the exhibition features artists who explore the intertwined associations of body, land and identity in Latin America's history and present: Minia Biabiany (Guadalupe, 1988), Vivian Caccuri (Brazil, 1986), Frieda Toranzo Jaeger (Mexico, 1988), Ana Mendieta (Cuba, 1948 - USA, 1985), Nohemí Pérez (Colombia, 1962) and Vivian Suter (Argentina, 1949).

BODIES & TERRITORY: A GROUP EXHIBITION AT JUMEX MUSEUM

The artists from the region have addressed the concepts of body and territory as sites of resistance and creativity, especially in response to an ongoing colonial history. Through the works, the exhibition represents the artists' diverse responses to equally varied local conditions, whether environmental, social or cultural. The different practices are united by the use of poetic strategies to interpellate power.

The museum's galleries are designed to be presented as a sensorial landscape, with paintings, photographs, video, installations and performances that explore the ways in which bodies exist and inhabit territories in the context of political, historical and physical dimensions. The works speak to the particularities of Latin America, from the archaeological site of Yagul in Mexico and the Amazon jungles to the city of Panajachel in Guatemala and the archipelago of Guadalupe in the Caribbean. The show includes works and pieces produced specifically for the exhibition.

 

Siluetas sobre maleza was curated by Kit Hammonds, chief curator at Museo Jumex, and Marielsa Castro Vizcarra, associate curator.

Between 1973 and 1980, Ana Mendieta made the Siluetas series, one of her best-known works. Within this series are several photographs and short videos of performances that were made after traveling to the archaeological site of Yágul, located in the central valleys of Oaxaca, Mexico.

 

Artist Minia Biabiany 's installations use natural elements to tell silenced stories about the French colony and assimilated territory of the island of Guadalupe, where she was born and continues to live. Her installation The length of my gaze at night (2021) examines the land pollution affecting the Guadeloupean population and how mental space and physical space influence each other.

 

Nohemí Pérez is originally from Tibú, a municipality located in the Catatumbo region of Colombia. Through drawing, painting and embroidery, the artist explores the different types of oppressions that the territory has faced both in the community and in nature. The Noise of Man (2023-2024) explores, through five monumental paintings presented as a panorama, the destruction of the Amazon by forest fires.

Artist and musicologist Vivian Caccuri investigates sound, or the absence of sound, in a political, social and historical context. Caccuri presents a new work made for this exhibition that continues her investigation of non-human sounds, agency and movement. Ant House Music (2024) consists of a sound system in the form of ant body parts that is used in the exhibition for a live performance, in collaboration with composer and musician Thiago Lanis.

 

For more than forty years, Vivian Suter has lived and painted on a mountaintop in Panajachel, a Guatemalan village on the shores of Lake Atitlán, on what was once a coffee plantation. Suter's work reflects the tropical landscape. Natural elements such as water, mud, earth, leaves and the bark of the surrounding trees are part of her paintings.

 

Frieda Toranzo Jaeger uses the hybrid or electric automobile as a metaphor for a contemporary, futuristic landscape. For the artist, the interior of the automobile represents a colonial, capitalist and patriarchal psychological space. Through painting and embroidery, she penetrates these historically masculine spaces to turn them into provocative, feminine, queer, fantastic, sexual and utopian spaces.

Related Topics