Oaxaca is used to starting the second half of the year with a bang – July in the city is synonymous with fiesta. The streets are overflowing with people, the workshops are busy, and the galleries are filled with art. Below are six of the dozens of exhibitions that can be visited for free during the month of July in some of the city’s artistic spaces.
¡QUE SE ABRA LA PUERTA!
SEXUALIDAD, SENSUALIDAD Y EROTISMO
COLLECTIVE
Photo: Courtesy of IAGO
¡Que se abra la puerta! is an exhibition that projects an ambitious perspective: that of Carlos Monsiváis on the historical and socio-cultural evolution of sexual diversity in Mexico. Curated by Rafael Barajas “El Fisgón” and Alejandro Brito, the delicate selection shows a fraction of Monsiváis’ vast artistic collection. The Instituto de Artes Gráficas de Oaxaca (Oaxaca’s graphic arts institute) hosts photographs, illustrations, paintings, engravings, sculptures and texts that raise an issue openly interpreted by a writer, but also openly discriminated against by society – issues that still remain taboo in most of the country, but for which there is still a constant struggle.
Instituto de Artes Gráficas de Oaxaca (IAGO)
Macedonio Alcalá 507, Centro, Oaxaca
Wednesday to Monday, 9:30am – 8pm
CUERPXS Y SEXUALIDADES
COLLECTIVE
Artwork by Jesús Guevara Rico · Detail by Rafael E. Lozano
As part of the conference series “Cuerpxs y Sexualidades” the artistic exhibition shown in Espacio Artístico Xicoténcatl brings together many perspectives on the same subject: Bodies and sexualities. However, if you stop to observe and listen carefully to the artworks, you quickly realise that the nerve center of the exhibition is diversity: The diversity of represented bodies, of techniques, of experienced expressions and sensations, of artists, and the diversity of things meant to be said and felt.
The exhibition Cuerpxs y Sexualidades is a celebration of difference. But it’s not just that, the artistic expressions gathered here are also routes of resistance against the opprobrium with which a society like ours submits to those who express their affections differently. “In the face of a system that has perpetuated stereotypes and stigmas that exclude, violate and discriminate other ways of exercising and enjoying sexuality, and bodies that do not comply with the socially imposed norm,” affirms the Oaxaca Assembly of Sexual Diversity “the exhibition invites us to look, rethink, know and respect human diversity. How do I experience my body? How do I live my sexuality? How do I recognise the other as different?”
Espacio Artístico Xicoténcatl
Xicoténcatl 303, Centro, Oaxaca
Monday to Friday 10am – 2pm and 4pm – 8pm, Saturdays 10am – 2pm
ATEMPORAL
COLLECTIVE
Photo: Rafael E. Lozano
Atemporal is a collective exhibition that brings together the work of three artists: Leonel Villegas, Dulce Aquino Monterrey and Inocencio Villegas. In it “a classic iconography enriched by the indigenous worldview: (…) community life, local commerce, language customs and traditions” is approached in a pictorial way. You can visit this exhibition until the end of July in Adoratorio Casa de Arte y Diseño.
Adoratorio is a new artist-run space that bets on emerging artists and cultural dissemination in a very peculiar way: From its location. It is based in the heart of the Benito Juárez Market. From that booth – a small space filled with popular energy, surrounded by the traditional bustle of the market and its people, it seeks to promote new artistic and design proposals through exhibitions and workshops, as well as through the young artists who emerge from them.
Adoratorio Caseta de Arte y Diseño
Ricardo Flores Magón Caseta 117, outside the Mercado Benito Juárez, Centro Oaxaca
Monday to Saturday 9am – 8pm, Sunday 11am – 5pm
SAN PEDRO GARZA Y GARCÍA
YVONNE VENEGAS
Photo: Courtesy of Córdoba Lab+Galería
San Pedro Garza García is a municipality in the Mexican state of Nuevo León. Some indexes have placed it as one of the municipalities with the highest per capita wealth in Mexico and even Latin America. In this scenario of opulence Ivonne Venegas has developed a photographic investigation of the daily life of its inhabitants. For years she has sought to achieve moments of trust within the homes and places of San Pedro’s families to photograph them privately and with their guard down. The exhibition comprises a series of photographs that portray (from a subjective and intimate perspective) the lifestyles of families and individuals within a society that is ostentatious. The exhibition can be visited for free in the Córdoba Lab + Gallery.
Córdoba Lab+Galería
Manuel Bravo 313, Centro, Oaxaca
Monday to Friday 10am – 2pm and 4.30pm – 7pm
LA MÁQUINA DE IMAGINAR
IVONNE KENNEDY
Photo: Rafael E. Lozano
Ivonne Kennedy is a tenacious artist who lives in Oaxaca, Mexico, where she was born. She has developed her visual work over thirty years and in various countries including Germany, Cuba, the United States and Mexico, and she has exhibited her work in many more. Jorge Pech Casanova described her as “part of a pictorial movement that emerged in a counter-current of the almost unmistakeable iconography that was handled almost unequivocally in Oaxaca. Defying, moreover, a medium of suffocating male preponderance.”
She is currently showing some of her most recent works in the exhibition La Máquina de Imaginar, which brings together a selection of her pictorial, sculptural and graphic work in Laberinto Casa de Arte. This alternative space in the centre of Oaxaca, was created by the artist around ten months ago and is currently under her direction. It is a welcoming place to drink coffee, eat, read, and attend the events and exhibitions that are regularly organised by their collaborators to allow a variety of arts to coexist within its walls.
Laberinto Casa de Arte
General Porfirio Díaz 310, Centro, Oaxaca
Monday to Saturday 10am – 10pm
FOTOGRAFÍA MEXICANA INTERVENIDA 22
COLLECTIVE
Artwork: La Coco Charles · Photo courtesy of Tingladography
Once again Tingladography has organised one of its famous collective exhibitions of Mexican Intervened Photography. This time twenty-two artists based in Oaxaca were invited to intervene on coluored studio portraits. The artists are: Libertad and Alejandra Salgado, Carolina Castañeda, Laura Cravioto, Rolando Calderón, Zarigüeya, La Coco Charles, Ariadna Rojas, Sergio Chávez, Jaime Ruiz Otis, Cesar Martínez, Melchor Gesner, Migotas, Ramon Sanmiquel, Uriel Marín, Emílio Quiroz, Davittt, Alexis Escobar, Jou Morales, Bayrol Jiménez, Albert Von Kitsch and John Kaine. As always, the techniques used, as well as the creations, are diverse: various types of embroidery, ink, oil, acrylic, glass and collage. With this exhibition Tingladography celebrates twelve editions of Mexican Photography Intervened, and it will surely continue for many more.
Tingladography
García Vigil 212 ,Centro, Oaxaca
Open every day 11am – 2.30pm and 5 – 9pm
