Museo Anahuacalli and TONO are thrilled to announce ¿Cómo se escribe muerte al sur?, a duo exhibition by Carolina Fusilier (Buenos Aires, 1985) and Paloma Contreras Lomas (Ciudad , 1991). The work responds to the phantasmagoric imagination of the museum, which Diego Rivera created as a temple for art to house his collection of prehispanic objects and where he hoped to be buried when he died.
Through video and sound installation, sculpture, and painting, the artists will transform the museum into the site of a fictional thriller mixing personal views on death with the symbols embedded in this enigmatic museum/monument/mausoleum. Both artists draw inspiration from the architecture of the Anahuacalli and its surrounding landscape to construct their own mythologies and a cast of spectres. Reflecting on the writings of 19th-century Russian philosopher Nikolai Fyodorov, Fusilier seeks to translate some of his theories on biocosmism to
the museum’s collection. Exploring Fedorov’s belief that death is not natural but rather a flaw in the design of human beings and something that can be overcome by technological and scientific means, she constructs biocosmic bodies through a new series of works. Carolina playfully and speculatively materializes Fedorov's eccentric theories, through ensembles of paintings/sculptures that depict some
sort of machinery for reviving life, pyramidal-shaped paintings that appear as a continuation of the doors of the museum, to a series of abstract videos made by artist and collaborator Miko Revereza, that explore sensory color forms on VHS, to her main installation “Resurrected Garden”, based on found dried plants in the museum that are animated through mechatronic motors.
While the Anahuacalli invokes a specific set of ghosts, museums more broadly function as mausoleums. However, museums can also operate as machines for resurrection in contextualising objects through new exhibitions. Through a constellation of new works, including videos, murals, and ceramic maquettes, Contreras Lomas continues exploring a question present in much of her work: What would happen if the landscape could tell its own story? Drawing strong inspiration from Latin American science fiction and B-horror films, she constructs a universe of ghosts, fantastical creatures, and sacrifices to reimagine what she identifies as the myth of modernity. Together, both artists seek to establish mystical bridges that articulate their notions of immortality and a Mesoamerican futurism crossed and interrupted by Western modernity.
