Denver Art Museum

 The Denver Art Museum panel on Mexican modernism was very interesting and gave me a lot of insight on the movement as a whole and on the various social and cultural phenomena that influence artist’s perspectives, and correspondingly, their artistic work. I found Damian Ortega’s work as a political cartoonist fascinating, especially since his recent work has been with sculptures and installations. His installation Movimiento en falso (estabilidad y crecimiento económico) was particularly striking. The position of the barrels and their constant instability is almost cartoonish, the constant threat of collapse and overall fragility conveys the theme and commentary very effectively, presenting the Mexican economy and its counterintuitive reliance on the oil industry as the unstable and unreliable folly it is, all we can do is watch and wait for its inevitable collapse. 

Additionally, Pablo Helguera’s background and reasoning for his themes of identity and self image was something I could relate to strongly. I also grew up in Mexico and later moved to the United States, the feeling of having to present myself as a certain identity or constantly having to explain who I am to people was something I have experienced all my life on both sides of the border. I really appreciated his project “Escuela Panamericana del Desasosiego”, which seeked to create connections between communities throughout all of the American continent. Growing up in Mexico and the United States with friends from Chile, Peru, and Central America, I have always lamented the lack of fraternity or feeling of community between Latin American countries, especially between Mexico and its Central and South American neighbors. Most of what I have learned about South American culture has been from Chilean and Brazilian meme pages I follow. Seeing their humor and cultural references, as well as the way they interact with political figures and cope with their country’s violent history has shown me that we have a lot in common, and would benefit greatly if we turned inward instead of towards the American hegemony.