Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/749295
292 culturedmag.com Ildefonso that will later travel to Museo Amparo. Such testimonies are the embodiment of a new cultural MeMo, or Mexico Moment, appropriating the branding device conceived to sell Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto's early economic reforms. This second-wave MeMo is helping the country project its creative talent onto the world stage: In 2016 alone The New York Times' travel section gave the Distrito Federal its top slot in its annual "52 Places to Go" feature; the Philadelphia Museum of Art opened a blockbuster Mexican Modernism survey; Pedro Reyes had a sculpture show at Dallas Contemporary and turned the Brooklyn Army Terminal into a political haunted house called Doomocracy; Jose Dávila opened his second solo show (and produced a Thirsty Coyote wine with Hacienda La Lomita) at Sean Kelly while preparing for a traveling, multi-venue outdoor sculpture project with the Los Angeles Nomadic Division through 2018; Gabriel Orozco was awarded the 2016 Aspen Award for Art during Art Crush and unveiled his stunning redesign of South London Gallery's garden; and Abraham Cruzvillegas constructed his inimitable "Autoconcanción" sculptural show with indigenous Angeleno plants at Regen Projects on the heels of his epic—and organic—Turbine Hall takeover. (Meanwhile, Cruzvillegas' hometown gallery, Kurimanzutto, made a big splash with an acclaimed group show at Jessica Silverman Gallery last January.) "I invited them to curate a show of their program with the hope that the exhibition would foster a rewarding international conversation. As the art world expands with a never-ending amount of fairs, to see a program as distinctive as Kurimanzutto's in a gallery show was hugely successful and well-received," says Silverman. "The food and art scene is also very hot right now because Mexico is full of culture and innovation. Plus, it's outside of a tech epicenter, which gives way to more handmade creativity." Such DIY scrappiness is certainly at play with Mexico's young curators like Kurimanzutto's Boston- born Bree Zucker, who organized the gallery's new pop-up billboard project, Sonora 128, in Condesa, which has already featured social engagements by Antonio Caro and Nobuyoshi Araki. She's also part of the independent collective Galería La Esperanza, which produced a buzzy group show during Gallery Weekend, "Touching Hands With Someone Seriously Beautiful," which was organized by iconic curator Gerardo Contreras, who founded the legendary (and legendarily experimental) Preteen Gallery in the late aughts. "La Esperanza is a smokescreen platform for the return of Preteen Gallery to Mexico City," says Zucker of their group show in a bodega shop window, which employed a list of artists including Petra Cortright, Donna Huanca, Jeff Zilm and Harmony Korine as a platform to create an entirely new model: not showing individual works by the artists, but rather, by "channeling" their souls. "The statement of the show is 'an exercise in curatorial divination' and Gerardo's statement is 'the artist is the message,' which is brilliantly terrifying," adds Zucker. "The 'group show' in that vitrine functions as one whole work, a mandala, authored by the artists via Gerardo. Of course we've had many questions already: Is it the artists, or is it Gerardo? Is the artist a curator or the curator an artist? And what is Galería La Esperanza anyway? The show is a Russian doll, because we keep adding layers. Mexico is the land of the possible. What is important is that these spaces display the work of artists we truly believe in and add to the dialogue here in the city." Meanwhile, Gloria Cortina, the DF's first lady of interior design, is hoping to export the local dialogue (specifically the one she maintains with artisanal wood, stone and metal workers from Teotihuacan, Michoacán and Puebla) to the international stage in a new furniture collection she debuted in November at New York's Cristina Grajales Gallery. "Mexico has a new light and Mexican clients and internationals alike are discovering the country's COURTESY OF SEAN KELLY GALLERY, NEW YORK "La Esperanza is a smokescreen platform for the return of Preteen Gallery to Mexico City," says Zucker Jose Davila's Untitled (Femme d'Alger) IX, 2016