04 Feb 2011

Antimuseum presents 'Hand by Hand with General Cardenas', Mexico DF

After Spanish civil war, many republicans who fled from fascism were welcomed in Mexico by General Lazaro Cardenas. Years later, after Cardenas' death, the exiles built a monument in the Park of Spain in Mexico City, to thank the generosity of the former president. It is a great hand, whose aesthetic is related to Latin-American constructivism, from Torres-Garcia to Jesus Rafael Soto and Helio Oiticica, and very close to the work of Mathias Goeritz. It has building scale and people can walk on the palm, designed as a small square.

This memorial commemorates the encounter between Spanish republicans and Mexican revolutionaries, and evokes the ideals of both. But at the same time symbolizes the defeat of the twentieth century utopian thought, and brings up the memory conflict that our time has inherited from those ideological wars.

In this project we will work on memory from three complementary paradigms: first, what in Spain is known as Historical Memory, a great social and political debate on the recovery of the defeated as part of the history of a country. Second, from analyzing Oblivion Technologies, ie, the fading of memory tissue in post-Fordist capitalism. Finally, from the artistic practices that have appropriated the Archive as a meaning production device.

Antimuseum will be based for three weeks of February in the giant hand sculpture erected in honor of General Cardenas. Artists from Mexico, Spain and Germany will develop their work in and around the monument itself, to re-signify it from their artistic languages and provide new insights into the different paradigms of memory.

Participating artists:
María María Acha, Eder Castillo, Discoteca Flaming Star, Domènec, Rudolf Herz, Enrique Ježik, Rogelio López Cuenca, Javier Pérez Aranda, Lorena Wolffer