Cynthia Gutiérrez at Museo Cabañas
The eighteenth-century colonial hospice that homes the Museo Cabañas gives 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 latest initiatives that underscore the jarring contrasts amongst museological shows, modernism, and Indigenous historical past and decide aside the advanced 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 similar 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 toes, the fertile area of a future that’s nonetheless tethered to a protracted and inescapable historical past. The collection “Sepulcros Modernos” (Fashionable Sepulchres), 2019–20, additionally makes reference to mid-century inventive follow. By inserting swaths of traditional-style textiles—each industrially produced and woven on looms—immediately 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 actual a quiet vengeance on the Catholic construction.
— Àngels Miralda
