At the end of 2023, the Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC) introduced a new phase in its exhibition program with Genealogies and Dissidences. MUAC Collection. In this project, the works that are part of the museum’s collections are exhibited in a single section of the building through various conceptual approaches that are periodically renewed.
Continuing this project, From a Bird’s Lap, an exhibition opening on June 7th at MUAC, unfolds as a repertoire of approaches to the natural environment—its elements, the beings that inhabit it, and their interactions and relationships.
Following the framework proposed by American anthropologist Anna Tsing, the exhibition—curated by Lucía Sanromán, Chief Curator, and Jaime González Solís, Associate Curator—is based on the inseparable link between the natural world and the human dimension at three levels: first nature, which includes all interactions among living things; second nature, referring to biological relationships shaped by capitalism; and third nature, which encompasses the persistence of life in spaces deeply ravaged by extractivism and pollution.
Framed by this model of relationships, From a Bird’s Lap brings together works in which the representation of plants, animals, and territories expresses an awareness of modes of perception and artistic reproduction, as well as their impact on what the artworks engage with.
This selection of pieces from the MUAC Collection challenges the primacy of the horizon and the panoramic view as the first approach to the environment; furthermore, it traces ways of perceiving grounded in intimate experience and the recognition of the material characteristics of living things. By questioning the act of seeing, these artistic strategies engage with bodily experiences and phenomenological encounters that, collectively, offer alternatives to the outdated opposition between the human and the natural.
MUSEO UNIVERSITARIO ARTE CONTEMPORÁNEO (MUAC).
Insurgentes Sur 3000. Centro Cultural Universitario. Alcaldía Coyoacán. C.P. 04510.
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