Strange Currencies: Art & Action in Mexico City, 1990-2000

Philadelphia's Moore College of Art & Design art galleries will present from September 19 to December 12 a deeply researched exhibition about experimental art activities in Mexico City during the 1990s. The 1990s in Mexico were defined by a catastrophic economic crisis, social turmoil, and extensive impoverishment, with generalized political corruption and a chronic increase in violence and instability due to the effects of an accelerated process of globalization. The exhibition brings together a selection of twenty-eight artists who lived and worked in Mexico City in the 1990s, whose varied practices and points of view reflect the multiplicity of subjects and approaches that emerged in the course of that crucial decade. The exhibition will feature nearly 80 works of art in a vast range of supports, including sculpture, photography, video, painting, installation, performance, and sound art. The works selected represent the gamut of issues and ideas explored at the time, such as gender-issues debates, social stratification, the flows of economic and symbolic capital, social inequality and social struggles, violence, urban development, youth culture and culture in general, and the realities of everyday life in a city in a permanent state of crisis. "Strange Currencies functions not only as a significant historical document, but also as an in-depth look through which we are able to revise our present moment at the social, political, economic, and cultural levels, in the global scale, as it emerges from the ideas and events of the past", says Kaytie Johnson, Rochelle F. Levy Director and Chief Curator at Moore College of Art & Design. The artists featured in the exhibition are: Eduardo Abaroa, Francis Alÿs, Marco Arce, Gustavo Artigas, Iñaki Bonillas, Miguel Calderón, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Minerva Cuevas, Claudia Fernández, Thomas Glassford, Silvia Gruner, Daniel Guzmán, Jonathan Hernández, Gabriel Kuri, Teresa Margolles, Taniel Morales, Yoshua Okón, Fernando Ortega, Luis Felipe Ortega, Vicente Razo, Daniela Rossell, SEMEFO, Santiago Sierra, Melanie Smith, Sofía Táboas, Laureana Toledo, Pablo Vargas Lugo, and Lorena Wolffer. Kaytie Johnson curated the exhibition, and an illustrated catalog will be published.