Mirnx. Untitled, 2017; Installation; 60 x 60 x 25 cm. Courtesy of Punto Gozadera and the artist. Photo: Evelyn Xs.

The jarring juxtaposition of fine art, improvised, unfinished space, and the murder of yet another (trans)woman, is the perfect framework with which to understand Corpografías en Resistencía, an exhibition organized as part of the BataFems series of events and conferences about gendered violence in Mexico. The exhibited work ranges from drawing and digital prints to installation, and the tone of each individual work is equally eclectic. Some pieces are funny and irreverent, others defiant, others mournful. All of them celebrate the diversity of bodies and sexual expressions that comprise the local, sexually dissident community.[1]

The work of El Chamuko, Alex X. A. B., and Maldita Geni Thalia stand out for their humor, sarcasm, and irreverence, while Rürrü Mipanochia’s painting, Cólotl, takes this irreverence to new heights. It depicts an orgy, in vivid color, between a hermaphroditic, pre-Columbian supernatural being, a mattress with a penis, a vomiting woman, and various other human and nonhuman figures. The work clearly reflects the adventurous, creative, and complex ways in which this community plays and resists.

Eli Moon. In Memoriam, 2017; installation; 160 x 160 x 25 cm. Courtesy of Punto Gozadera and the Artist. Photo: Evelyn Xs.

The tone of Mipanochia’s piece contrasts sharply with Eli Moon’s sculptural work, entitled In Memoriam. The installation features the protective grill from a household fan mounted upon a cross from a cemetery, with a chicken-wire background. The axial spokes of the grill radiate from a dark point in the center across several concentric circles. The work’s intention, in the context of Flores’ recent murder, is clear: Her extinguished life still expands, despite her absence.

Rürrü Mipanochia. Cólotl; acrylic, magic markers, and china ink on paper; 50 x 35cm. Courtesy of Punto Gozadera and the artist. Photo: Evelyn Xs.

The artist Mirnx remembers Flores, and her community’s loss, with an installation featuring a pair of sparkling red high heels surrounded by protective circles and marks reminiscent of ritual magic. It’s a dissident queer parody of the boots and rifles that memorialize the loss of U.S. soldiers. Contrasting terribly with the last moments of Flores’ life, the shoes themselves suggest Dorothy’s ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz and the desire for home and safety they represent.

Several pieces by the artist Trixia Lara combine the mournful and celebratory tones of other works in the exhibition with a marked defiance in the face of the reality of gendered violence. According to the gallery text, her work uses her own menstrual blood collected across many “moons” and “other body fluids.” In Sabia Patrona del Kuágulo (Wise Patron Saint of Coagulation), an installation resembling a shrine, the artist uses these fluids to paint a vaginal image, evocative of La Virgen de Guadalupe, and the words “free your blood” in two gilded frames.

Trixia Lara. Germinará en Rebeldía la Sangre Derramada, 2016-2017; installation; 60 x 130 x 50 cm. Courtesy of Punto Gozadera and the Artist. Photo: Evelyn Xs.

In Germinará en Rebeldía la Sangre Derramada (The Spilt Blood Will Germinate in Rebellion), Trixia Lara brings violence even further to the forefront. Centered between two images that mix the vaginal shape of La Virgen with violated feminine bodies, the artist writes the following text in her own body’s blood and fluids: “you tricked me; you beat me; you raped me; you tortured me; you kidnapped me; you murdered me; you disappeared me; you buried me; but you didn’t know that I would germinate in rebellion.”[2] The spilt blood of the title refers simultaneously to the blood in the work of art, to menstruation, and to injuries caused by violence; the artwork makes clear that from all of these, resistance will spring.

The lived reality of political–sexual violence in Mexico is hard to imagine from the perspective of the first world. Just about every activist here has friends and comrades who have been raped, tortured, beaten, disappeared, or killed. It has become ordinary. Corpografías en Resistencía is a testament to the strength and perseverance of injured peoples in precarious situations, and their continued fight for their right to exist; it is tremendous how immediate, powerful, and joyful these artists prove this resistance can be.

Corpografías en Resistencía is on view through April 8, 2017.

[1] “Sexualidades disidentes” is an umbrella term used by some feminists and queer activists in Mexico City to separate themselves from homonormative, mainstream gay or lesbian culture.

[2] The original is in Spanish.

Rürrü Mipanochia. Xolotl-pie hecho de bola and Muerte-Xolotl, 2016; acrylic, stylographs, and magic markers on paper; 88 x 75.5 cm and 76 x 120 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Artspace México. Photo: Jorge Gomez del Campo.

The exterior of the gallery features a mural of hybridized animal and human figures in pornographic poses, alongside snakes, birds, and flowers. The partially clothed figures suggest contemporary girly fashions, as well as iconography from pre-Hispanic, Mesoamerican cultures. Mipanochia furthers this jarring mash-up by using bright neon colors and simplified geometric shapes, which together create a playful and irreverent effect. The work actively plays with transgressions of every sort, conflating old and new, human and animal, man and woman, divine and profane.

The transgressions continue into three rooms of the gallery, where several series of works in the same style represent mythical figures in various stages of undress and copulation. Fluids, body hair, gaping genitals, piercings, high heels, strap-on dildos, fishnet stockings, brightly colored knee socks, flora, and fauna abound. Interestingly, all of these highly pornographic, profane paintings are rendered with great care and attention to detail. The artist uses flat colors, clear and confident lines, and composes each with deliberation. In addition, every piece is traditionally framed and matted, most of them under glass. These choices mimic the nature of transgression—the care and precision exercised here seem almost perverse—and collide unexpectedly with the concepts present in the show.

Rürrü Mipanochia. Zotz 2, 2017; acrylic, stylographs, and magic markers on paper; 60.5 x 75.5 cm. Courtesy of the Artist and ArtSpace México. Photo: Artspace México.

Zotz, a series of three paintings, plays with the idea of the bat, which Maya and Nahua cultures associate with death, fertility, and sexuality. The series represents seven feminine figures, whose breasts and genitals are exposed as they lounge in postures reminiscent of contemporary pornography, presented as either objects of desire themselves, or those doing the desiring. Black fluids spring from some of their open vaginas. One figure defecates rainbow-colored feces, another ejaculates from a strap-on dildo. Each body is performing its own erotic action, and together, all of the bodies are encircled by outlined color fields and an abundance of bats and flowers.

Rürrü Mipanochia. Untitled, 2017; installation view, Xochiquetzfil: Erotismo y procreación, 2017. Courtesy of the artist and Artspace México. Photo: Jorge Gomez del Campo.

Another series in the show represents the god of twins and of monsters, who is also associated with gods of seduction, sin, punishment, and excess. In Xolotl-Pie Hecho de Bola, the artist represents the god as a woman with legs spread, black fluid flowing from her genitals, dressed in brightly striped socks, and with a doglike head. Muerte-Xolotl shows the same god—generally considered male, but represented here with a female body—in a blue thong, with female genitals exposed, touching the breast of a squatting woman with a skull for a head.

Rürrü Mipanochia. Tlaltecuhtli (1,2), 2017; acrylic, stylographs, and magic markers on paper; 60 x 75 cm. Courtesy of the Artist and ArtSpace México. Photo: Evelyn X.

The series Tlaltecuhtli brings these various kinds of playful, pornographic transgressions together. Two paintings depict three round-faced clownish figures in pornographic repose using all of the same pictorial and thematic conventions of the other works in the show; amputated limbs, ejaculations of every sort, and neon colors are ever present. This series, however, situates these “perverse” pleasures in the very specific context of a world created by gendered violence. Mipanochia paints all three feminine figures either surrounded by, or being menaced by, snakes, clear symbols of phallic domination. Tlaltecuhtli, the series’ namesake, is a god of ambiguous gender, whose rape functions as a creation myth for the heavens and the earth in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica.

Tlaltecuhtli suggests that Mipanochia’s show, Xochiquetzal: Erotismo y Procreación, is merely play in this world of violence and trauma, but it is not just play. The title of the show includes “procreation,” the reproduction of the culture. What, then, is being brought forth by Mipanochia’s work? In Preface to Transgression, Michel Foucault talks about an anti-dialectical, embodied, and erotic language that emerges from the death of God. In an essay in her book Bodies of Work, Kathy Acker talks about writing as something very similar, as an embodied process of discovery from within our own labyrinthian organ, the colon, where reason is lost. Mipanochia’s work uses exactly this kind of playful and threatening language. It is as if the artist took Kathy Acker seriously when she said in an interview, “I’m looking for what might be called a body language. One thing I do is stick a vibrator up my cunt and start writing—writing from the point of orgasm and losing control of the language and seeing what that’s like.” What that’s like may very well be Rürrü Mipanochia’s show.

Xochiquetzal: Erotismo y Procreación is on view through March 31, 2017.

Carla Rippey. Cuando Mi Mangre Aún No Era Mi Sangre, 2008-2016 (detail); photo transfer and thread on paper; dimensions variable. Courtesy of the Artist and Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City. Photo: Jorge Gomez del Campo.

The circular structure of the exhibition emphasizes this intertwined relationship. On the interior wall, a few works are displayed alongside a detailed timeline of the artist’s life. Biographical events, which include falling in love, expatriating after leaving the United States, escaping from political repression during the Chilean coup, and then building a life and career in Mexico, are in dialogue with the artist’s work on the exterior walls and galleries. Just like the installation that opens the show, this curatorial structure mimics the way that individuals and artists interact with their social and political realities. Surrounding the timeline that represents the details of Rippey’s life are works that bring forth how all the big world events and ideas are lived personally.

Many of the works in the show speak to the fragility of personal agency when confronting political power. In Paisaje con Buitre [Landscape with Vulture] (1993), the artist depicts a desert landscape with a herd of camels, a few shepherds, and the cadaver of an animal in the foreground. A military helicopter hovers above the whole scene. Both the people and the animals depicted await their fate beneath rapacious forces they cannot control.

Carla Rippey. Choose Your Weapon, Catalogo de Objetos Peligrosos, 2010; photo transfer and thread on paper; each panel: 23.5 x 15.75 in. Courtesy of the Artist and the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City. Photo: Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil.

In another work, the relationship between the signifier of power and the human subject is more ambiguous. La Persistencia de la Memoria [The Persistence of Memory] (1987) is a drawing of two women in two separate panels who are surrounded by knives. The panel on the left depicts a woman in historical clothing that extends into the right panel, which depicts a vulnerable, naked woman peering back at the other woman. It is unclear if the knives are menacing the women, who are locked together by history, or if they are being wielded as tools against the persistence of memory. 

Choose Your Weapon, Catalogo de Objetos Peligrosos [Choose Your Weapon, Catalog of Dangerous Objects] (2010) explicitly presents this equivocation. The artist depicts tools of every sort on multiple panels. They range from what we consider mostly benign, like hands and teeth, to weapons including knives and machine guns. The work and its title emphasizes that both resistance and domination are ambiguous acts created by individuals who are neither merely perpetrators nor victims.

Carla Pippey. Carnaval, 2001; graphite on paper; 31.5 x 55 in. Courtesy of private collector and Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City. Photo: Jorge Gomez del Campo.

As a whole, Resguardo y Resistencia presents individuals, particularly women, subjected to forces and environments much greater than they are. The formal qualities of all of the works in the exhibition suggest that the artist’s primary goal is to show care and empathy for her subjects. The simultaneously descriptive and expressive lines, negative spaces, shading, and compositions all evince the hand of an artist who is committed to her work and bringing out the emotive qualities of her subjects.

One drawing in particular presents this in a clear and troubling way. Carnaval (2001) depicts a carefully rendered adolescent girl in a revealing top, surrounded by empowered and raucous older men. She looks directly at the viewer with an expression that approaches fear or insecurity. It’s ambiguous, however, why she is there. None of the men pay direct attention to her. She seems to have chosen to explore and experiment with her nascent sexuality only to find herself in a dangerous, masculinist environment.

The world reflected in Rippey’s retrospective is filled with risk, violence, and forces that are outside of any individual’s control. In circumstances such as these, what could be more important than resguardo y resistencia?

Carla Rippey: Resguardo y Resistencia. Exposición Retrospectiva 1976–2016 will be on view at Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil in Mexico City through October 30, 2016.

* The title translates roughly as “self-protection and resistance,” but resguardo means not just “protection” but also “care.”

Víctor del Moral. (d) Es: truccion, tructura, critura (fragmento 5), 2015; installation; dimensions variable. Courtesy of the Artist and Estudio 71, Mexico City. Photo: Jorge Gomez del Campo.

The studio and exhibition program have revitalized an abandoned historic building in downtown Mexico City, but the organizers have left the structure minimally restored. Large and small holes pepper the ceilings, and aged paint and plaster chip off of the walls. Some of the works play literally with this relationship. The installation (d) Es: trucción, tructura, critura (fragmento 5) (2015) by Víctor del Moral intervenes directly on the cracked and stained surfaces of the gallery’s two floors. Part of it uses a material that looks similar to the vinyl lettering used in trade shows. Despite the dramatic physical difference between the artist’s marks and the worn surfaces, the artist manages to blend his work with the building. Similarly, in other fragments of the installation, the artist places subtly modified sheet-metal wall studs throughout. These barely altered construction supplies blend with the rough and crumbling old building, and appear like leftovers of an abandoned remodel. Del Moral emphasizes that the work of art always exists in relation to its context.

Sofía Echeverri. Traductor de Sospechas, 2015; graphite on paper. Courtesy of the Artist and Estudio 71, Mexico City. Photo: Jorge Gomez del Campo.

Some of the artists interact with the space in more subtle ways. On the second floor, the dilapidated building inspires a series of representational drawings by Sofía Echeverri. The artist takes the shapes of cracks and stains and transforms them into small drawings of figurative and fantastic creatures. Without insider knowledge, a viewer could easily miss these origins, emphasizing that art has a relationship to its environment, even when the work itself minimizes it.

Diego Narváez. Glacier, 2013; oil on canvas. Courtesy of the Artist and Estudio 71, Mexico City. Photo: Jorge Gomez del Campo.

Some work in the show explores this connection in unintentional or unconscious ways. A large-format painting by the artist Diego Narváez, Glacier (2013), reflects the character of the space. In the hermetic cube of a traditional gallery, the painting might signify very differently, but here the layering, color, and marks interact with similar features on the opposite wall. Several paintings by Guillermo Santamarina also seem to either refer to, or be influenced by, the location. These works use a variety of painting and printing techniques on plastic fabrics reminiscent of tablecloths. The marks are layered, fragmented, and incomplete, mimicking the gallery’s floors and walls. It appears that the space has such a powerful presence that artists cannot avoid its influence.

Yann Gerstberger. Untitled, 2015; cotton thread on vinyl tarp. Courtesy of the Artist and Estudio 71, Mexico City. Photo: Jorge Gomez del Campo.

Similarly, the stunning large-format works by Yann Gerstberger reflect (or re-create) the aesthetic of this crumbling old building. The artist mixes materials and forms to create patchworks of colors and textures that appear to result organically from the artist’s process. While these new pieces do not diverge dramatically from the artist’s previous work, they do display a less ludic, moodier quality, suggesting the influence of the processes of decay and renewal apparent in the gallery.

The End functions on many levels: It emphasizes how art is responsive to its environment—sometimes even accidentally—and it shows how the context of the work of art must be considered as part of its interpretation. It also reminds the viewer of the way that art can be used to creatively transform physical and social relationships. This blurring of the border between art and life makes for exciting and inspiring work that can lead viewers to see their surroundings differently.

The End is on view at Estudio 71 in Mexico City through March 5, 2016.

Gloria Carrasco. Entre Fusiles y Metlapiles, 2014; ceramic; 160 x 180 x 40 cm. Courtesy of the Artist and Museo de Arte Popular, Mexico D.F. Photo: Jorge Gomez del Campo.

These phalli are actually metlapiles, cylindrical-shaped stones used to grind maize on a metate (grindstone). Also called mano del metate (metate’s hand), the metlapil figures prominently (along with the metate) in Mexican art and culture; they are a nostalgic image of pre-conquest Mexico, as well as a symbol of women’s work and domesticity. But Carrasco’s show, Prófugos del Metate (Fugitives from the Metate), breaks this cliché open. The artist clearly enjoys exploiting the humorous contradiction of an object that simultaneously suggests the masculine and the feminine. In one work in particular, Mine Is Bigger than Yours (2014), the metlapil is explicitly presented as both an erect phallus and a symbol of feminist empowerment.

In another work, various large-scale metlapiles on a bed of stones lean against a wall. The artist clearly wants to play with what they might signify; the title, Entre Fusiles y Metlapiles (Between Rifles and Metlapiles) (2014), situates the viewer within a hermeneutic field that engages many possible meanings simultaneously; the artist, having created something that looks suspiciously like a bunch of cigars in an ashtray, seems to be winking at the viewer, saying that sometimes a cigar isn’t just a cigar.

Carrasco repeats this aesthetic and conceptual strategy throughout the show. She delights in all of this interpretive fun: There is a metlapil as a bird’s nest; there is one as a pair of butt-to-butt coke bottles; I Have Been Shopping (2014) looks like a bag of novelty dildos from a high-end department store.

Gloria Carrasco. I Have Been Shopping, 2014; shopping bag and textile. Courtesy of the Artist and Museo de Arte Popular, Mexico D.F. Photo: Jorge Gomez del Campo.

Carrasco’s work plays with the fluidity of the sign. However, the jokes are part of a more serious game that slowly becomes apparent. Among all of the objects in the gallery, a few suggest that within the multiplicity of meanings there lurks a dangerous structure. One metlapil has the text “only with my consent” written on it. Another is protected by a layer of spikes that reads “tócame” (“touch me”) when seen from a distance. One is wrapped in surgical gauze. Another simply reads “violencia.”

Gloria Carrasco. Prófugos del Metate, 2014 (detail). Courtesy of the Artist and Museo de Arte Popular, Mexico D.F. Photo: Jorge Gomez del Campo.

An easy-to-miss piece is Seguridad Civil (2014). It cleverly uses interpretative play and visual puns to reveal the stakes in Carrasco’s game. It looks exactly like a case for a fire ax or extinguisher. But instead of the expected text and contents, the artist places the words “en caso de violencia, romper el vidrio” (“in case of violence, break glass”) across the front, and mounts a metlapil inside. This play on expectations suggests that violence in the home constitutes a civil emergency, and that the metlapil is simultaneously a weapon, a symbol of power, and a signifier of the feminine body at risk.

Gloria Carrasco. Seguridad Civil, 2014; ceramic, wood, and glass. Courtesy of the Artist and Museo de Arte Popular, Mexico D.F. Photo: Jorge Gomez del Campo.

Carrasco’s phalli are indeed on the run, creating an anarchic and fluid field where totalitarian essentialism is flippantly exchanged for a multiplicity of divergent meanings. The artist is correct in emphasizing the potential violence of this situation; few things are as dangerous as a person whose power is threatened. But, more importantly, her work evokes the idea that resistance should be fun.

Gloria Carrasco: Prófugos del Metate is on view through February 7, 2015, at the Museo de Arte Popular in Mexico City.

Poster calling for the return of the disappeared normalistas. Photo: Jorge Gomez del Campo.

According to some critics, neoliberal reforms account for much of this violence. The chapter on Ciudad Juarez in Ed Vulliamy’s book Amexica is a particularly good example; it situates the epidemic of femicides in that city in the context of the structural changes brought about by the North American Free Trade Agreement. Furthermore, Vulliamy asserts that the particularly brutal character of narco/state violence in Mexico results from the drug war’s neoliberal form.

The question of how art responds to, or ignores, this climate is of utmost importance. Recently, the College of Art and Design of the National Autonomous University of Mexico organized a conference, XI Simposio Internacional del Posgrado en Artes y Diseño, on management and professionalism in design, documentary film, and the visual arts. Peppered throughout the talks given by important and august museum directors, curators, art-investment bankers, copyright lawyers, and gallerists were many dissident voices calling for and describing another, more socially conscious art world. The presentation by curator and artist Carlos-Blas Galindo Mendoza, in conjunction with the roundtable he moderated, revealed the contradiction implicit in staging a conference about professionalism and management in the context of the social, political, and humanitarian crises facing contemporary Mexico.

In his talk, “Inserción de Productos Artísticos Visuales en Circuitos Establecidos de Distribución y Consumo, así Como en Redes Independientes,” Galindo ironically explained how to “make it” in the art world: The number-one rule is to never make anything that poses a real threat to neoliberal capitalism. He went on to describe the extant art world as globalized and generic; art objects have to be like a pair of jeans, equally sellable in China, Europe, or Thailand; curators and critics are thinkers-for-hire, justifying what the market values. This art, according to Galindo, is masculinist and authoritarian.

Santiago Ortega Hernández, speaking at the roundtable moderated by Galindo, further indicted the art world. In his thoroughly researched talk, “La Sartén por el Mango. El Coleccionismo Empresarial en el Mercado del Arte,” the artist and academic traced the links between big business, investment banks, and art. This link between art and capital is a matter of record; at one point, however, Ortega Hernández suggested that anyone who participates in these markets and institutions tacitly supports the human-rights abuses carried out by some of the businesses and banks heavily invested in art.

Galindo challenged the audience to develop a solution to these ethical, moral, and aesthetic questions. He called for the development of a new kind of art, a postcolonial art that is feminine, militant, solidary, irreverent, and diverse. This new art would be tied to a particular place and time, it would interrogate power and capital, and it would act with a communitarian—and even revolutionary—spirit. Fortunately, at least to some extent, this art already exists in the work of dozens of local artists and collectives operating within and on the periphery of the art world.

Ambra Polidori. Recuerdo de Ciudad Juarez, 2011; postcards and display rack; 200 x 30 x 30 cm. Courtesy of the Artist and the Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico D.F. Photo: Jorge Gomez del Campo.

Internationally recognized artists like Teresa Margolles directly confront the worst results of neoliberal reforms in Mexico. Her work at the Venice Biennale, ¿De Qué Otra Cosa Podríamos Hablar? (2009), and En el Aire (2003) at the Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC), are examples of how art speaks to power from within the institution. In one work, someone mops the floor with water impregnated with crime-scene remains; in the other, the artist mixes these remains with soap bubbles that float around the viewer. The suggestion is clear; these rarefied art spaces have some relationship to the violence that exists outside of their hermetic walls. Ambra Polidori exhibited a piece in the MUAC that powerfully addressed the ideological and economic realities of femicides in Ciudad Juarez. Recuerdo de Ciudad Juarez (2011) consisted of a rack filled with postcards of crime-scene photographs of femicides with the text Recuerdo de Ciudad Juarez (“Souvenir of Ciudad Juarez”) in playful, colorful script. This piece still resonates as one of the most powerful and complex denouncements of violence by a contemporary Mexican artist.

Casa Gomorra. Photo: Gustavo Ruíz

There are many other works coming from important Mexico City museums and commercial galleries that address this reality, but Galindo’s talk suggests that these works might not meet the criteria of the new art he calls for. Why, he asks, do we include some of this work in the material and ideological institutions of the art world and not others? It seems that for Galindo, any art included in the field is complicit with the politics and conventions of the gallery and museum; nonetheless, countless artists and collectives, which meet most, if not all, of the criteria set forth by Galindo, operate within, and on the periphery, of the art scene in Mexico City. Some important collectives facilitate the production of dissident culture and cultural artifacts. For example, Casa Gomorra is a home and cultural center dedicated to post-porn, trans-feminist, and queer/cuir projects, shows, workshops, performances, and parties. Tepetongo Balneario Crítico works at the boundary between art projects, political activism, and academic research.

Photo: Tepetongo Balneario Crítico.

Rexiste is an informal association of individuals and artists dedicating themselves to arts-based political action. They helped organize two key events this last year: the action commemorating the assassination of a young graffiti artist by police, and the “occupation” (the building was used with the permission of sympathetic administrators) of the Palacio de Bellas Artes as the center of a weekend of art and protest. Cráter Invertido, a collective with anarchist leanings, is one of the most active groups in the contemporary art scene. They are one of the few groups to operate simultaneously on the periphery and in the center of the art world (they were invited to participate in the most recent Venice Biennale). They have been active for a few years and routinely have shows, workshops, free communitarian meals, and performances informed by anarchist aesthetics. There are many more of these groups in Mexico City, and countless more throughout the country. Mexico is full of art whose themes and structures actively work against the worst results of neoliberal policies in the country.

The story of one artist and activist in particular is indicative of this reality. At Casa Gomorra, Denise (last name withheld to respect her privacy) recounted her experiences organizing resistance to narco/state violence in Monterrey, the capital of the state of Nuevo Leon in the north of Mexico. She told us about strategies that mostly centered on reclaiming public space from violence. For instance, if a cartel hung bodies from a bridge, they’d organize a queer/cuir bike ride across it. Or, when violence shut down all the bars and parks of the historic downtown, artists and activists rented apartments and studios, and opened cafes and galleries as artistic and political actions.

This kind of praxis is remarkable and brave on its own; however, Denise continues to work even after being harmed by the worst of narco/state violence. She was one of two women on a bus that was stopped on the highway by what she believes were government paramilitaries. The paramilitaries separated the women. They lined up all the men and executed them. They then kidnapped the two women, beat, tortured, and gang-raped them, and left them for dead on the side of the road.

The women managed to flag down a passing bus. The driver let them travel to the nearest town in the luggage compartment. When Denise arrived at the town, she made her way to a local hospital. The doctors concluded that there had not been a rape; her vagina had lubricated. This horrifying experience has not impeded Denise’s ability to resist, to organize, to write, and to make art. Mexico is filled with stories like this—of people who will not give up hope that their lives will continue, that their loved ones will be found alive, or that the perpetrators of violence will be brought to justice.

Artists and artists’ collectives have been key in building community, maintaining awareness, and pressuring the state for justice and accountability. Galindo is absolutely right in calling for a new art. I hope that sympathetic people within the most important government and private art institutions listen. This new art already exists; it simply needs more of the material and social support the art world could provide.

Cecilia Barreto. http//www.möbius.10, 2015 (detail); mixed media on canvas; 140 x 200 cm. Courtesy of the Artist and El Quinto Piso, Mexico D.F. Photo: Jorge Gomez del Campo.

Several of the works address the current climate of political and structural violence. Cecilia Barreto’s painting, http//www.möbius.10 (2015), shows the city as a mediated battleground. The painting is composed of dozens of black silhouettes of activists, riot police, and police dogs against a mostly red background. Texts and icons, like a prominent Facebook thumbs-up, situate these scenes on social media. All of this is rendered with painterly marks on a medium-size canvas.

Simulacro (2015) by David Camargo also situates political violence as a mediated spectacle. However, in this case the artist creates a video-game caricature. Onto a geometrically simple 3D model of a soldier’s head, the artist video-maps scenes of fire, computer glitches, and a skull. The work suggests a relationship between the commonplace political violence in Mexico City and virtual realities. If Barreto’s work emphasizes political struggle as Facebook activism, Camargo places it firmly in the world of the video game.

Yutsil Cruz’s Crónicas Marcianas (2015) looks at structural violence in the context of popular culture. The artist juxtaposes images of 20th-century violence, barbed-wire border walls, and migrants and refugees alongside clips from contemporary and vintage UFO movies. She uses a lot of split screens and quick cuts that are reminiscent of early music videos. Once again the work displaces something as materially real as violence; Crónicas Marcianas is violence framed as late-night TV spectacle.

Not all of the work engages with the political in the same way. In Liz Misterio’s piece, El Regreso de Ana Suromal (2015), the artist uses her body as a feminist counterpunch to the realities of institutional and bureaucratic authority in the capital city. A series of still images projected on the wall documents Misterio exposing her genitals in front of symbols of atate power: the National Cathedral, the National Palace, the Monument to the Revolution, and others. These post-porn images borrow the aesthetic of “outdoor” pornography in order to question where, and with whom, power resides. In addition, the piece is irreverent; the artist shows off her ample pubic hair and unapologetically fat body with glee. The stark contrast between Misterio’s playful genitals and the heavy, square lines of monumental architecture suggest an interesting tension between the Modernist binaries of order/chaos, masculine/feminine, town/country, and civilization/barbarity that are key to understanding this exhibition.

Liz Misterio. El Regreso de Ana Suromal, 2015 (action-art still); action-art and video projection. Courtesy of the Artist and El Quinto Piso, Mexico D.F. Photo: Liz Misterio.

These binaries are apparent in Sonidos de Resistencia: Semáforos Sonoros (2015) by Félix Blume, one of the most successful works in the show. The artist and several collaborators document a work in which the artist hacks a crosswalk signal to produce the sound of a donkey braying. The documentation includes photos of puzzled commuters and pedestrians, as well as the apparatus the artist used in the hack. The work appears to have momentarily made daily life strange enough to cause viewers to see their surroundings differently, and perhaps consider the deep sonorous and symbolic difference between city life and country life.

Other noteworthy works in the show play with this same tension. In Cuchillos para el Olvido, Daniel Godínez Nivón presents several handcrafted knives in a glass-and-wood display case. A text explains that each knife represents the way in which a particular congregation in the town of Cieneguilla, Guanajuato, confronts oblivion. It’s a powerful reminder of the social and economic forces—neoliberal reforms, resource exploitation, and organized crime, among many others—that are dramatically changing rural Mexican life.

Daniel Godínez Nivón. Cuchillos para el Olvido, 2015; knives and photographs in display case; 120 x 90 x 90 cm. Courtesy of the Artist and El Quinto Piso, Mexico D.F. Photo: Gustavo Ruiz Lizárraga.

A large-format drawing, El Estacionamiento Público (2015) by Apolo Cacho, answers the questions posed by this show directly and pessimistically. Obsessive lines create rich textures that suggest a passage from harmony to frenzy, and architectural forms are stacked on top of one another and push up against organic forms. The artist’s marks sometimes reinforce this tension and sometimes contradict it. The scale of the work and the thousands of short, expressive lines combine to produce a deep awareness of the artist’s hand. The drawing makes no other reference to a human being, suggesting a hostile city that is both a monument to consumption and excess as well as to humiliation and deprivation.

Apolo Cacho. El Estacionamiento Público, 2015; ink on paper; 400 x 120 cm. Courtesy of the Artist and El Quinto Piso, Mexico D.F. Photo: Gustavo Ruiz Lizárraga.

The image of Mexico City presented by this show is vast, complex, contradictory, and improvised—a juxtaposition of styles, time periods, unimaginable wealth, and terrible poverty. Escalating violence lives alongside mega developments that are built on garbage dumps and slums. This exhibition suggests that the city is a barely organized mash-up of lofty dreams and hard realities, and that these contradictions have collapsed the modernist binaries that the artworks address; opposites become indistinguishable from one another. In La Polis Imagi-nada, civilization is barbarity, and violence is a game.

La Polis Imagi-nada is on view at El Quinto Piso through December 12, 2015.

Lorena Wolffer. Lorena Wolffer Expuestas: Registros Públicos, 2015; installation view, Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico D.F.. Courtesy of Lorena Wolffer and Museo de Arte Moderno. Photo: Jorge Gomez del Campo.

Documentation of several of the artist’s actions and performances make up the majority of the exhibition, which includes documentation of four pieces in particular. The red text along the wall is from an installation titled Acta Testimonial (2009), in which the artist wrote the insults directed at clients of a woman’s shelter on the walls of a gallery, while the clients’ own recorded voices described their experiences.

A large photograph of the artist handing out chocolates to passing motorists, and a plastic tube filled with those chocolates, documents 14 de Febrero (2008). In this piece the artist handed out chocolates with wrappers containing written accounts of the experiences of a woman named Mari who was forced, along with her four children, to sell chocolates on the busy streets of Mexico City. If Mari failed to sell enough, she was beaten and abused by her husband.

On a table in the center of the space, photographs and texts document Antimemorias: Enmiendas Públicas (2011), in which Wolffer invited passersby to interact with her body in such a way that it came to represent the wounds that the individual women had suffered. These interactions included actions such as washing Wolffer’s skin, or placing bandages on the artist’s body at the locations where the victims had been injured.

Lorena Wolffer. Antimemorias: Enmiendas Públicas, 2011; installation view, Lorena Wolffer Expuestas: Registros Públicos, 2015. Courtesy of Lorena Wolffer and Museo de Arte Moderno. Photo: Jorge Gomez del Campo.

On the far wall of the gallery is a video monitor and a small shelf with a text that invites gallery visitors to take a sticker to indicate publicly whether they “have experienced some type of violence against women.” This installation presents another of Wolffer’s actions, Encuesta de Violencia a Mujeres (2008), which consisted of a kiosk with a survey about violence against women. Each participant was then given a sticker to indicate whether or not she had been victimized. Next to this display, in a closet-size black room with a single chair, plays a looped video. This silent, untitled video (2015) of white text on a black background was made specifically for this show. It lists the names of those close to the exhibition that have been harmed by violence against women. In its own words, it is a “manifesto against oblivion” so that this violence will “never be repeated.”

Lorena Wolffer. Lorena Wolffer Expuestas: Registros Públicos, 2015; installation view, Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico D.F.. Courtesy of Lorena Wolffer and Museo de Arte Moderno. Photo: Jorge Gomez del Campo.

This small exhibit, and Wolffer’s work, makes present the serious and heart-breaking violence that one in five Mexican women report having experienced; it plays with concepts of public and private space in such a way that these forms of violence become something that the viewer has to confront in himself or herself. Wolffer’s work empowers women harmed by violence. It says, “You are not alone; you will not be forgotten.” Her work is also a powerful political message; the performances and actions documented here take place in very public and political spaces, like the Zócalo (main square) of Mexico City, suggesting that violence against women is a public/social problem embodied in private spaces. Unfortunately, the museum presents Wolffer’s work as a solely private, voyeuristic affair.

The viewer is invited to move through a small space filled with horrifying narratives and images about violence (like the account of the beating of a pregnant woman’s belly by her husband until she aborts). But except for the curator’s text on the wall, there is little to push the viewer out into the world, to consider the material and ideological realities of contemporary Mexico that allow for this kind of violence: corruption, machismo, and impunity, to name just a few. This exhibit reads as a human-interest story designed to move the viewer emotionally but not critically. Considering the gallery show as a whole, it becomes clear that it is driven by this specific kind of TV-journalistic and voyeuristic ethos. Documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis describes this type of situation as “Oh Dearism,” in which tragedy is presented without the contexts that might open up strategies of political action, in which the only reasonable response is to enjoy wringing your hands and saying, “Oh dear, how terrible.” Wolffer’s work empowers and challenges, it takes action; this show betrays her activism.

Fortunately, the show includes other elements besides the gallery exhibit. Before the show’s closure on October 18, the museum has scheduled a series of related events that includes a performance and talk by the artist, as well as workshops led by others. Hopefully these peripheral activities might mitigate some of the disempowering elements of the show.

Lorena Wolffer Expuestas: Registros Públicos is on view at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City through October 18, 2015.