We are pleased to partner with Baxter St at the Camera Club of New York for a special reception to celebrate Lamentable tierra / Sorrow Land, running from September 11th through October 26th.
This photography exhibition exposes Mexico’s forgotten rural landscapes through the lenses of three contemporary Mexican artists, Clemente Castor, Carlos Iván Hernández, and Federico Martínez.
Curated by Joaquín Trujillo – who recalls working the land in Zacatecas as a child before migrating to Los Angeles – it explores the aesthetic aftermath of the neoliberal takeover and the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which caused a mass migration of people from Mexico to the United States.
With the arrival of neoliberalism, Mexico’s fields were left to suffer a slow death, the border filled with cheap labor, and young farmers turned desperately to the horrifying conditions of the sweatshops.
In Lamentable tierra / Sorrow Land, the different processes and chromatic disparities speak of new aesthetic possibilities for Mexico’s landscapes away from idealized stereotypes of Mexicanity.
Castor, Hernández, and Martínez’s images, although compelled to drive the spectator away from any portrayal of a festive Mexico, are, nevertheless, still expressive and, undoubtedly, painfully beautiful.
This exhibition is part of a series of guest-curated exhibitions at Baxter St at CCNY resulting from an open call for proposals, and is made possible in part by generous support from public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council and by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, Steven Amedee Framing, and Yarden Wines. Baxter St is W.A.G.E. certified.
Additional support provided by Aeroméxico and the Mexican Culture Institute of New York.
Un Muro Rosa (A Pink Wall)
Performances by Mexican-American artist José Villalobos and by Trujillo & Marrón will take place in Baxter St’s garden.
In conjunction with the exhibition Lamentable tierra / Sorrow Land curator Joaquín Trujillo will exhibit A Pink Wall, an intervention in Baxter St’s garden that consists in creating a pink wall in response to Donald Trump’s persistency on building a border wall – and wanting it to be painted black. For A Pink Wall, Trujillo will blow-up a photograph to fit the wall’s shape and size revealing nothing but a fierce pink tone, the so-called “Rosa Mexicano”: that purplish pink that became popular with architect Luis Barragán’s modernist constructions, and speaks proudly about the nation’s true identity (even more than, perhaps, the three colors portrayed in Mexico’s flag). On the “backstage” of the wall, photographs taken by three Mexican artists: Lorena Marrón, Guillermo Serrano and Gustavo Villagrana, will be displayed. Performances by Mexican-American artist José Villalobos and by Trujillo & Marrón will also take place “behind the wall”, all of them tackling issues related with immigration, such as things that are “left behind” and the imminent construction of new identities when leaving one’s roots.
Event information
Date: Tuesday, October 8th, 2019
Time: 6:00 – 8:00 pm
Venue: The Camera Club of New York
Address: 126 Baxter ST, New York, NY 10013
Map and Directions
Phone: : (212) 260-9927
Tickets: FREE
Private event, 21+
Performance at 7pm
Hosted by Baxter St at the Camera Club of New York
