Cynthia Gutiérrez at Museo Cabañas
The eighteenth-century colonial hospice that homes the Museo Cabañas offers a wealthy backdrop for an artist who works with archaeology and materials historical past. Guadalajara-born artist Cynthia Gutiérrez seizes on this context for her exhibition “Inhabiting the Collapse,” which presents fourteen current tasks that underscore the jarring contrasts amongst museological shows, modernism, and Indigenous historical past and decide aside the complicated cultural bricolage that’s up to date Mexico.
The set up Marcha de Tierra (March of Earth), 2019, consists of pyramid-shaped mounds of damaged pottery of various attributes and origins, all in shades of reddish brown. The trope of piling supplies right into a nook is a well-known one, evoking artists corresponding to Robert Smithson and Felix González-Torres. In Gutiérrez’s work, this show tactic fuses archaeological relics with the visible vocabulary of Conceptual artwork. The earth tones learn like floor beneath our ft, the fertile area of a future that’s nonetheless tethered to an extended and inescapable historical past. The sequence “Sepulcros Modernos” (Trendy Sepulchres), 2019–20, additionally makes reference to mid-century inventive apply. By inserting swaths of traditional-style textiles—each industrially produced and woven on looms—instantly into the tough geometries of Judd-like pedestals, Gutiérrez emphasizes materials distinction whereas additionally pointing to the chromophobia of the white dice.
Mounted on two exterior partitions of the courtyard, the set up Trayectorias III (Trajectories III), 2022, consists of 300 arrowheads carved from obsidian. Believed to be a present from the gods, this uncommon volcanic glass was utilized by Aztecs in central Mexico to create blades and ornaments. Embedded into the colonial hospice, these Indigenous instruments precise a quiet vengeance on the Catholic construction.
