MUAC, one in all Mexico’s prime up to date artwork museums, grew to become embroiled in widespread controversy final week after it was denounced for exhibiting an Ana Gallardo piece made in homage to an aged intercourse employee, with many describing the gesture as misogynistic as a result of the piece utilized phrases comparable to “whore.”
Because the scandal continued over the weekend, MUAC initially defended the work on the idea of inventive freedom. However the Mexico Metropolis museum’s assertion appeared to not quell public anger over the piece, which led some to graffiti the establishment’s facade with phrases that urged its management to respect intercourse staff.
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“VIOLENCE IS NOT ART,” learn one graffitied phrase.
In line with on-line Argentine newspaper Infobae, MUAC quickly closed Gallardo’s present yesterday. The museum informed Infobae that the present would stay shuttered to the general public “whereas a assessment course of is carried out by the corresponding college authorities.”
A MUAC spokesperson didn’t reply to ARTnews’s request for remark.
Gallardo, an Argentina-born artist who splits her time between Mexico and Buenos Aires, is well-known inside Latin America. Her CV contains showings on the Havana Biennial, the Bienal de São Paulo, and the Venice Biennale.
Her MUAC present, which opened in August, focuses particularly on how she addresses points impacting ladies and options works comparable to Extracto para un fracasado proyecto (Extract from a Failed Challenge, 2011–24), a textual content piece written straight onto a wall on the museum. That piece derives from her communications with Estela, a resident at Casa Xochiquetzal, a Mexico Metropolis shelter for aged intercourse staff.
The work options traces of unpunctuated textual content that seem to vaguely handle the expertise of visiting Casa Xochiquetzal, which isn’t explicitly named within the piece. Sure phrases look like non sequiturs and embody phrases comparable to “whore,” although it isn’t all the time clear which voice is supposed to be uttering these phrases or whose perspective is being channeled.
On Wednesday, on its Fb web page, Casa Xochiquetzal accused Gallardo of failing to determine a significant relationship with Estela, one thing that the shelter claimed confirmed by means of within the piece itself. Had Gallardo created a dialogue, the shelter wrote, “she would know that the phrases ‘prostitute’ and ‘whore’ are painful phrases for the inhabitants of the home, and now with this piece she is revictimizing them.”
Casa Xochiquetzal went on to accuse Gallardo of “mendacity” in regards to the origins of the piece, alleging that she failed to say that she had been requested to not document the phrases of the shelter’s residents.
A consultant for Gallardo’s Buenos Aires gallery, Ruth Benzacar Galería de Arte, didn’t reply to request for remark.
On Friday, MUAC responded to Casa Xochiquetzal’s assertion, explaining Gallardo’s piece as being half and parcel of a bigger physique of labor that “narrates her struggles, encounters, disagreements, victories and frustrations within the face of a society that abandons its aged.” The museum emphasised that it was dedicated to freedom of expression.
“MUAC isn’t alien to the sentiments of the neighborhood: solidarity with our most weak populations is a worth that guides our work,” the museum’s assertion mentioned. “We now have established contact with Casa Xochiquetzal with whom we may have a gathering that permits us to make a respectful name for dialogue to change concepts and positions.”
Some on social media claimed that MUAC had improperly defended an artist for a bit that had offended many. “The violence of privileged whites is freedom of expression,” surmised one X person on the finish of a thread that has since accrued almost 9,000 likes.
On Sunday, the museum was tagged with numerous phrases that alluded to types of violence and prejudice. “MUAC PUTXFOBICO,” learn one graffitied textual content that used a gender-neutral type of phrase for a concern of intercourse staff. These phrases had been sprayed onto a Rufino Tamayo sculpture exterior the museum that was additionally splashed with what gave the impression to be faux blood.
The web page for Gallardo’s exhibition on MUAC’s web site notes that the present will run by means of December 13.