WITHOUT RESTRAINT: MEXICAN WOMEN ARTISTS FROM THE DAROS LATINAMERICA COLLECTION
KUNSTMUSEUM BERN, 03.06.2016 – 23.10.2016
Without Restraint presented together for the first time contemporary art by Mexican women artists from the Daros Latinamerica Collection (Zurich), Europe’s largest and most important collection of its kind. More than 30 works, including photographs, videos, objects, and installations by the following internationally acclaimed women artists were exhibited: Teresa Serrano (*1936), Ximena Cuevas (*1963), Betsabeé Romero (*1963), Teresa Margolles (*1963), Claudia Fernández (*1965), Melanie Smith (*1965), and Maruch Sántiz Gómez (*1975).
Their multifaceted and thought-provoking works provide an overview of the most characteristic features of the Mexican contemporary art scene and of its development in recent decades. At the same time, the exhibition offered the opportunity to critically reflect upon and contextualize women artists’ production in contemporary Mexico. The works of these seven artists engage with the concept of mexicanidad—of national identity—and challenge the traditional roles and social spaces assigned to women and to minorities by the dominant hierarchies of power. By using different medias, these artists overthrow the existing order of everyday life and routine which traps women in a labyrinth of traditional archetypes. Topics such as life and death, the violated body, identity and migration, nature and the metropolis are critically examined and discussed in their works.
Curator: Valentina Locatelli
Exhibition catalogue: Valentina Locatelli (ed.). Without Restraint: Werke mexikanischer Künstlerinnen aus der Daros Latinamerica Collection/Works by Mexican Women Artists from the Daros Latinamerica Collection (ed. German/Engl.). Exh. cat. Kunstmuseum Bern, Berne. 2016. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz.
Exhibition poster by Kunstmuseum Bern. Betsabée Romero, Piel de casa, 2001, color print on Kodak professional digital paper mounted on aluminium © Bestabée Romero
Installation views with works by Teresa Serrano, Ximena Cuevas, Betsabeé Romero, Teresa Margolles, Claudia Fernández, Melanie Smith, and Maruch Sántiz Gómez.Photos by Valentina Locatelli.