Over the last ten years, Mexico City has become a thriving hub of artistic activity. A daring young generation of artists has developed a new vocabulary that embraces non-traditional materials as well as video, photography, and performance, with a love of conceptual art.  The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), presents Escultura Social: A New Generation of Art from Mexico City to explore the work of these significant and creative young artists.

Unlike recent surveys of Latin American art or regional overviews of art from Mexico, Escultura Social focuses on art that combines popular culture with a conceptual style that can be humorous, macabre, and imaginative in pushing the boundaries of art. This exhibition is not defining a “movement” or looking at a panorama of artists working in Mexico, instead, it includes innovative work made primarily in the last two years that has had a significant impact outside of Mexico by artists who formed a community in Mexico City and have often collaborated on projects together.

Escultura Social is curated by MCA Assistant Curator Julie Rodrigues Widholm who based the show’s theme on German performance artist Joseph Beuys’s idea of social sculpture, which she translated into the Spanish as escultura social.  The exhibition includes site-specific, performative, and ephemeral projects in addition to videos, photographs, and installations. The complete list of artists includes: Maria Alós, Carlos Amorales, Julieta Aranda, Gustavo Artigas, Stefan Brüggemann, Miguel Calderón, Fernando Carabajal, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Dr. Lakra, Mario Garcia-Torres, Daniel Guzmán, Pablo Helguera, Gabriel Kuri, Nuevos Ricos, Yoshua Okón, Damian Ortega, Fernando Ortega, Pedro Reyes, Los Super Elegantes, and the architect Fernando Romero.

Recorded Wednesday, June 27, 2007 at Museum of Contemporary Art.