Conquering and Constructing the Common
The exhibition explores the organisation of everyday life in the poor communities on the periphery of Mexico City
MUAC, 27. 11. 2013 — 2. 2. 2014, Mexico City
Curators: Amanda de la Garza, Alejandra Labastida, Ignacio Pla / Communities involved in the project: Asamblea Comunitaria Miravalle (one of the poorest young communities on the edge of the city), Calpulli Tecalco A.C., Milpa Alta (an indigenous Indian community on the edge of the city), Centro de Reflexión y Acción Laboral – Cereal (a group of Jesuits who act according to the principles liberation theology), Unión de Colonos, Inquilinos y Solicitantes de Vivienda, Cananea (a poor community on the edge of the city with 40 years of experience in self-organization
In a country with a highly differentiated population and a non-functioning state system, peripheral impoverished communities can work only thanks to forms of self-organisation through which they compensate for the deficiency and dysfunctionality of institutional structures. Videos recorded during field research>
The artist set up the materials arising from her field research into these communities in the Museum of Contemporary Art as a video installation, shifting them, then, from the outskirts into the centre. She also invited members of the self-organising communities to talk about examples of their practice, organised workshops, invited experts, students and other guests. This was not just about a one-way penetration of a forbidden zone, or just about opening up the space of visibility of the deprived, but a reversible translocation, the interference of social fields. The centre that includes museum and museum public finds the peripheral impoverished communities repugnant, communities that it does not know and into which it does not wander, about which it creates opinions based on bad news and fear.
If what disturbs the dominant system of knowledge and interests is repugnant, and Andreja Kulunčić reveals this space of repugnance to be a space of creativity and solidarity, of a struggle for a better life for the community, and invention, then she is having an empowering effect on both systems.
Aware that she is herself in a positive pole of power, she makes use of her privileged position, that of a white, European female artist, to awaken the transfer to these subaltern voices. Pulling these impoverished communities into the system, she creates a paradoxical situation: she undermines the system for she shows those it has disenfranchised and consolidates it for she diminishes the error, offering the system the possibility of its own restructuring with respect to the perception of relations in the community.
The premises of the MUAC during the exhibition became a creative space of learning, of critical reflections, of reciprocal empowering and concrete initiatives and collaboration of communities and individuals from the peripheral and from the dominant cultural areas of Mexico City.
(Text by Irena Bekić)