MUXE A VISUAL IDENTITY
This is a project that explores the distinctive visual identity of the ‘Muxe’ and its relation to contemporary globalised culture. The project provides a new prestpective on gender identitites and the visual and media culture in Mexico.
PULQUE :THE DRINK OF THE GODS
Pulque is an alcohlic beverage made from the fermented sap of the maguey plant. It is traditional to central Mexico, where it has been produced for milennia. Pulque was only drank in Pre Hispanic ties by nobles and elderly as well those who would be sacrificed. I am interested in the revivial of this drink and its relation to the c ommunity and social traditions as well as the visual symbols that are contained in contemporary and pre Hispanic culture. A Pulqueria (where pulque is drunk), is also linked to popular art forms such as murals, made specifically for these spaces. These artisitic representations contain symbolism and imagery fo popular culture. The mix of pre- Coumbian and contemporary identity are a constant in my research interest.
UN/SEEN
SAW commission statement:
During lockdown, objects in the British Museum started to crumble and break. Why? Because the lack of 17,000 visitors had altered the humidity. The breath of human beings literally stopped the art from crumbling. The museum relies on people to actually keep history alive. So how does the gallery survive without its audience? How does our inability to see art properly, in the flesh, affect our understanding and experience of it. These are questions we also ask within the realm of faith.
In the Bible Jesus is said to be the living Word of God. How do words, which we speak or learn from, embody how we live and relate to our experience of faith, especially when we are scattered?
We will explore these questions with a playful take on a childhood game, forming a chain of whispers which moves between audio and visual description. Ten artists will collectively produce an exhibition by creating pieces in sequence.
CALIBRE 16
Hace una década un grupo de artistas visuales pusieron en marcha los Talleres de Arte Contemporáneo TACO, un proyecto educativo cultural perfilado desde un particular sentido de comunidad: una suerte de coloquio entre fronteras y cosmovisiones personales las cuales, a través de la actividad plástica, invitan a ser cruzadas y trenzar lazos. Gracias a una convergencia con la ciudad industrial de Éibar, el proyecto CALIBRE 16. busca construir un correlato plástico que explore tanto el vínculo entre las transformaciones culturales y las económicas, como la relevancia de estos cambios en conjunto al formar una ciudadanía y un sentido de comunidad. CALIBRE 16. persigue dar cuenta del viraje que supone ir de un taller de fabricación de armas a un taller que arma a una sociedad.
MAYTÉ ANGELES, JAVIER FUENTES, PAULINA FRANCO, LEONORA SERRA, FERNANDO FUENTES, GABRIEL CARRILLO DE ICAZA, ELIZABETH DE JESÚS, RODRIGO FLORES HERRASTI, LAURA ELENA GARDUÑO, ANAHÍ H. GALAVIZ, ABRAHAM JIMÉNEZ, ERICK BACHTOLD, GORKA LARRAÑAGA, VICENTE JURADO, ERNESTO MORALES, ELENA ODGERS, ANNA PÁVEZ, MARIBEL PORTELA, SERGIO RICAÑO, ERIKA SERVÍN.
MAKE PRINT GREAT AGAIN
‘Make Print Great Again’ brings together eight artists based in the North East of England, each of whom has an individual approach to the nature, techniques and possibilities of printmaking and its position within contemporary art. The exhibition has been curated by Nick Christie and Johnnyx.
Erika Servin’s work draws upon the historic relationship between Mexican politics and popular street posters with their cheapness, ease of reproduction and strong graphic possibilities. The prints exhibited in this exhibition represent the setting of a Pulquería, a once popular Mexican tavern, few of which remain today, where pulque, the traditional drink made from the maguey plant was consumed. Servin plays with the possibilities for print in an expanded contemporary context.34/98/5973
MICRO MACRO PHOTO LITHO
An unlikely collaboration between Dr Enrique Escobedo-Cousin and Erika Servin.
Photo lithography process are routinely used in neuroscience and art. The objective of this collaboration is to produce a collectiono f macro- and micro scale images to share conceptual approaches and to exchange technical processes.
FLUXUS FIELDS
A collective exhibition showcasing ideas of Flux and exhibiting at the Cluny a pub and music hub.
Curated by Jhonnyx
MUJERES DE JUAREZ
The practice led work refers to written archives from the policde department, which describe, usually in a couple of sentences, the way the bodies were found in Cd. Juarez and its surroundings during the months of October to December of 1995.
From that graphic description, I made drawings which would represent that explanation, for each text an image would be screen printed into corn tortillas. (Being corn tortillas the main source of nutrition for Mexicans).
UK-MEX CULTURAL PRINT EXCHANGE
A project that brought cultural exchange between Mexico and the UK, creating dialogues and to make print/art accessible to all.
The project included residencies, workshops, exhibitions and and exciting bicycle mobile press called La Tamalera and gallery. The aim was to reach new audiences, I had Newcastle University, Northern Print and Vamos Festival as partners and gained a diverse and large number of audience.
INTRATEXTUAL
Visual poetry in the Contemporary Art Workshops
Despite its literal meaning, visual poetry is not exclusively linked to the gaze. The breadth of its margins—and therefore the difficulty of defining it—is because in this type of poetry, the word acquires a specific dimension and density. Beyond the hierarchy of meaning, visual poetry enables different phenomena that converge in language to establish a network of links and affections that does not depend exclusively on conceptual aspects. In this respect, the body—in its different meanings and connotations—determines the sphere of action of this intersection between the artistic and the verbal. Using innumerable resources, visual poetry opens the horizons of the lexicon to the ups and downs of the concrete and the sensorial.
The exercises proposed for this visual poetry exhibition with members of the TACO Contemporary Art Workshops community are drawn from a class/workshop held throughout a year and a half of work. With a range of backgrounds, ages and origins, the creators selected for this project were forced to cope with a two-fold challenge: tackling a hybrid subject —visual poetry—whose systematic, organized study is still in its infancy in Mexico. In contrast to the interest, demand, and a certain Mexican tradition of pairing the arts and literature, the material and documentary funds required to organize an academic review of this creative phenomenon are still scarce or disperse in this part of the world. However, this obstacle became a virtue, since dispensing with a hegemonic, overarching story meant that each artist created their own genealogies to suit their interests.
The dynamics and inertia of each creative process pose a second challenge. Each of the exhibitors is completely au fait with their area of training and the specialized tools of their respective disciplines. Coordinating accumulated experience in a field as dissimilar and anomalous as that of visual poetry involves pushing the boundaries of personal work to a greater or lesser extent. Nevertheless, curiosity always prevails, which, in each collaboration, and because of the involvement of language, guides the transition from the merely graphic or retinal towards a complexity capable of drawing on different contexts, mental tones and worldviews which, in the different works produced, create genuine intertextual warps.
Given the current adverse circumstances for public and community exhibition, staging a show in which language and visuality are hybridized involves a final reflection: What or for whom are we staging an exhibition? Far from confidently answering this question, doubt enables us to engage in a liberating degree of trial and uncertainty. In keeping with this spirit of exploration, TACO proposes an exhibition of visual poetry in a museum specializing in prints to direct curatorial attention towards the physical supports of the printing and publication of a piece of writing. However, this center should not be understood as an academic or a historical review, but as an artistic one, in which publishing acts as an intermediate zone between words and images. Accordingly, and beyond the principles of clarity and legibility, visual poetry addresses the craft of publishing from an aesthetic perspective coupled with its recreational possibilities.
In short, the effort that drives a visual poetry project such as INTRATEXTUAL resembles an essay with several voices and writings; an indefinite, wandering essay, yet one which at the same time focuses on exploring different states and territories of the text to explore what other sensations and experiences emerge during the act of reading.
Vanessa García Lembo: VISUAL POETRY, FRAGMENTATION.
Maribel Portela: THE TRIBE AND THE BODIES.
Rodrigo Flores Herrasti: OBIRE
Sergio Ricaño: THE ENCYCLOPEDIA AS A REALITY DEVICE