Mexico
Deleted scenes
We dig up some unreleased fragments of the interview with José Luis Barrios Lara that we were unable to include the first time around.
José Luis Barrios Lara
The philosopher, art historian, curator and critic José Luis Barrios Lara reflects on the founding myth of the West, modernity, and the invention of the other. He considers identity politics as a political tool and a means for the management of bodies in space, questions the effectiveness of the epistemologies of the South, and interprets the global migration crisis as a form of neo-slavery. A grim scenario in which, he says, certain intersections of art and politics still have the power to destabilise the semantic field of representation and make room for the subversive.
Melanie Smith
Melanie Smith talks about her encounter with Mexico, her relationship with painting, and the risks of so-called political art, which can end up being as dogmatic as the behaviour it supposedly condemns. She also reflects on satire and absurdity as tools of subversion and on the need to break down artistic frameworks and surfaces in order to create new realities.
Cuauhtémoc Medina
Cuauhtémoc Medina talks about post-colonialism and fetishisation tactics, about the status of museums in global networks, about the role of the market as disseminator, and about how to fight – and try to finally win – the battle for cultural complexity.
Mariana David and María Virginia Jaua about SEMEFO
Interview with Mariana David and María Virginia Jaua about the artistic collective SEMEFO, which burst onto the Mexican scene in the early nineties with a proposal that explored the notion and implications of death by manipulating the corpse and its transformations.