Imaginaries of the Expanded City

 

 

 

As the capital of a country as well as a state, Mexico city has a particular political structure, history and geography - situated on a plateau 2,000 meters above sea level. Of course, this emblematic Latin American city also has much in common with other major cities around the world, including their challenges: technological boundaries, resource limitations, poor infrastructure, ecological concerns and economic inequality. For this exhibition, five Mexico City-based artists use the idea of the city as an image and a workplace that constantly seeps into their personal lives, experiences, and memories–or most importantly, into their imaginaries.The show aims to recreate some of the effects on and affects of the city dwellers by highlighting how the urban landscape's social, economic, and political conditions are interiorized and recreated in a series of imaginaries that allow them to comprehend, apprehend, and act in the dynamics of city life.

Specially commissioned for this project, Enrique Arriaga, Amauta García, Iván Martínez, Antonio Monroy, and Juan Pablo de la Vega, use different strategies and media to deal with the expanded city. More than tracing or trying to render the city as a literal space, the artists address their relationship to it from the metaphor, the fictional, and the personal.