- The fifteenth edition of the Bienal FEMSA was held from May 23 to August 25, 2024 in the cities of Guanajuato and León
- The theme of this edition focuses on the poetic dimension of art and is presented as a call to the different senses in the face of the centrality of sight
- The agenda includes 29 commissioned artistic projects, a public and educational program, a meeting of independent editions, and a cycle of film projects
Guanajuato, GTO., May 30, 2024.- With a special opening agenda that for two days offered tours to visit artistic projects, activations, performances, a meeting of independent editions and a cinematographic performance, the 15th Bienal FEMSA, entitled The voice of the mountain, made the cities of Guanajuato and León vibrate on May 23 and 24.
With the inauguration of these activities, FEMSA and its Foundation celebrated more than three decades of promoting art through the Biennial, which emerged as a contest in 1992 and evolved into an itinerant platform for experimentation and dialogue that this year made the state of Guanajuato its home.
“The 15 Bienal FEMSA is a special moment for FEMSA, as we celebrate 30 years of promoting and fostering the art ecosystem in Mexico and Latin America; but above all, it is 30 years of coinciding and conspiring with artists, curators, managers, teams, and communities that meet to dialogue, share, and bring different artistic proposals to our region,” Lorena Guillé-Laris, director of Fundación FEMSA highlighted.
The Voice of the Mountain is composed of four programs: Commissions, which brings together 29 artistic projects developed for this edition; Irregular Topographies, a public and pedagogical program; At the Foot of the Mountain, a meeting of independent editions, and Travelling, made up of cinematographic projects.
The theme of this edition focuses on the poetic dimension of art and is presented as a call to the different senses in the face of the centrality of sight and its rationalization in the West, said Mariana Munguía, director of the 15th edition.
“The voice of the mountain is an image, a metaphor that symbolizes a path of discovery to create relationships with the world. The mountain also refers to an encounter with diverse knowledge, whose journey demands the sharpening of all the senses from the body. Listening to their voice means opening up to diverse sensory experiences and appealing to everything that is often not perceived,” Munguía said.
The Voice of the Mountain is a comprehensive program that unfolds as a great topography full of reliefs, including its entrails. Like a territory in its extension, when we travel through it, we are faced with different heights that allow us to look at things from different points of view and scopes, roads that fork or intersect, clearings and shadows in which to stop to rest, rivers that we must cross.
The curatorial team, made up of Pamela Desjardins, Christian Gómez, Eugenia Braniff, and Isis Yépez, established lines that explore corporeality, identity, territory, and landscape, themes that cross the practices of the participating artists and that dialogue with the more than 20 venues and allied spaces, including Forum Cultural de Guanajuato, through the Museo de Arte e Historia de Guanajuato, the Museo del Pueblo de Guanajuato, Instituto Cultural de Guanajuato, Museo Regional Alhóndiga de Granaditas of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Instituto Cultural de León, Universidad de Guanajuato, as well as the independent space, Torre Andrade.
Adriana Camarena de Obeso, head of the IEC, highlighted the historical relationship that the state has with FEMSA in terms of artistic initiatives.
“With its participation in the 15 Bienal FEMSA, the State Institute of Culture reaffirms its commitment to diverse artistic manifestations and will continue to contribute to cultural policy construction processes within the framework of institutions that increasingly assume new discursive modalities capable of promoting museum practices, the educational function of museums, dialogue, appreciation, and support for artistic creation,” said Camarena de Obeso.
Opening Agenda
After the opening ceremony of the 15 Bienal FEMSA, which took place at the Palace of Powers Museum on May 23 at 4:00 p.m., the public was able to visit the Museo del Pueblo de Guanajuato to learn about the artistic projects of Daniel Godínez Nivón, Lucía Vidales, Magali Lara, Salvador Xharicata, Tuxamee, and Arrogante Albino, a collective that carried out the activation “Out of the field,” with which the exhibition hall intervened.
All projects establish a dialogue with the spaces that house them. For example, in the Museo del Pueblo in Guanajuato, Xharicata and Tuxame – who were professionally trained in León and Guanajuato – propose projects that refer to the narratives of the region: the first revisits the historical relationship between the Purépecha community (from which it originates) and the territory of Guanajuato; and Tuxamee tackles the festivity of January 12 in León with an installation on the relationships between food and the popular dimension of religion.
In Museo Regional Alhóndiga de Granaditas works by Ana Hernández, Isa Carrillo, Lorena Mal, and Néstor Jiménez are being exhibited. Carrillo’s commission for the biennial is a kind of offering to the act of textile making, materialized in the portrait of the mountain.
The first day ended at the Museo Casa Diego Rivera with the national premiere of “Nanacatepec”, a cinematographic performance conceived by Elena Pardo and Azucena Losana, which combines analogous materials with a soundtrack of electroacoustic music. This project is part of the Travelling program, which had Eduardo Thomas as curatorial coordinator.
The opening agenda continued on Friday, May 24, with a tour of the exhibition projects, divided into three areas of the city of León.
The Circuito Forum Cultural Guanajuato is made up of Museo de Arte y Cultura de Guanajuato, where you can see the works of Alan Sierra, Tania Ximena, Cosa Rapozo, Felipe Baeza, Galia Eibenschutz, Javier Barrios, Josué Mejía, Karla Kaplun, Miriam Salado, and Tahanny Lee Betancourt, which have as a common denominator the concept of the hybrid body, that body that transforms and is impossible to think of as a static entity; and Torre Andrade, where the work of Javier Barrios is being exhibited.
In Barrio Arriba, the public can visit the work of Sofía Táboas in the Jardín Allende, who proposes an installation covered in Venetian mosaic resembling a fragment of a pool, which at the same time will serve as a bench for public use and with which she reflects on the search in memory about topographies found elsewhere.
And finally, the Circuito Centro is made up by the Jesús Gallardo Gallery, with works by Ana Hernández, Francisca Benítez, and Miguel Fernández de Castro; the exhibition halls of the María Grever Theatre, with works by Daniel Aguilar Ruvalcaba and Jaime Ruiz Martínez that explore collective processes and their pedagogical dimension; and the Eloísa Jiménez Gallery, with works by Ana Gallardo, Ana Paula Santana, Nina Fiocco, and Taniel Morales.
As part of the inaugural agenda, from May 23 to 26 At the Foot of the Mountain took place, which is a meeting of independent editions that takes place on the same weekend as the traditional National Book Fair of León (FENAL) with the purpose of building bridges between both audiences.
This meeting, held at the Museo de Arte e Historia de Guanajuato, in León, brought together more than 30 independent projects that explore how contemporary art and print dialogue, with editorial initiatives that are in themselves means of creation and critical spaces. The coordination of At the Foot of the Mountain was in charge of Iurhi Peña.
In this same space you can visit “30 years in the art world. A review of the Bienal FEMSA,” a retrospective exhibition inaugurated last March as a preamble to the 15th edition of the Biennial and which brings together more than 80 works under the curatorship of Daniel Garza Usabiaga. This exhibition concludes on Sunday, July 14.
After the opening agenda on Thursday and Friday, the activities continued with performances, talks, and activations on Saturday 25 and Sunday 26. The full agenda can be consulted at https://bienalfemsa.com/eventos/inauguracion-15-bienal-femsa/
The 15 Bienal FEMSA The Voice of the Mountain ends on August 25. To check all their activities, visit the website bienalfemsa.com and follow the networks Facebook: bienalfemsa, X: @bienalfemsa, Instagram: bienalfemsa, YouTube: @Bienal-FEMSA.
###
About Fundación FEMSA
At Fundación FEMSA we cultivate prosperity for this generation as well as for the next ones, so we focus on four causes that we consider levers of change for our present and future:
Early Childhood, Artand Culture, Circular Economy, and Water Security. For more information, go to: www.fundacionfemsa.org or follow us on our social media FB, IG, TW (@FundacionFEMSA) and LI (/Fundación-FEMSA).
About Bienal FEMSA
The Bienal FEMSA, which was established in 1992, aims to recognize, strengthen, stimulate, and disseminate artistic creation in Mexico. From its 12th edition, it began a process of transformation, evolving from a contest to an itinerant curatorial platform. This format makes it possible to disseminate the artistic wealth present in various regions of Mexico, building networks of artistic collaboration within local communities, with the commitment to generate global connection and visibility for its members. The Bienal FEMSA is part of the FEMSA Foundation, which promotes positive impacts on people and communities through social investment projects focused on sustainability.
About the State Institute of Culture
The State Institute of Culture is the decentralized body that heads the cultural policy of the Government of the State of Guanajuato. In addition to substantive functions in the fields of artistic dissemination, heritage conservation, editorial production, and the coordination of libraries and houses of culture. It operates a network of 10 museums and exhibition spaces in five municipalities that include the Museo del Pueblo de Guanajuato, the Museo Casa Diego Rivera, and the Museo Palacio de los Poderes.
About the Museum of Art and History of Guanajuato
The Museum of Art and History of Guanajuato (MAHG) belongs to the Cultural Forum, one of the most important cultural complexes in the country. Since its opening on November 27, 2008, it has registered around 4.7 million visitors in 180 temporary exhibitions and about 1 million attendees in education and outreach activities; its inter-institutional relationships with ICOM, Ibermuseos, ILAM, the Network of Museums for the Attention of Persons with Disabilities, the Network of Museums of Guanajuato and the country’s museum community stand out; the MAHG is committed to social responsibility and sustainability through the IntegrArte program.
Get to know their digital platforms: Website: mahgforum.guanajuato.gob.mx/ Facebook: Museodeartehistoria https://bit.ly/mahgmx / X: @mahg_mx https://twitter.com/mahg_mx / Instagram: @mahg_mx / https://www.instagram.com/mahg_mx/ / YouTube: mahgmx https://bit.ly/youtubemahg / Issuu: forumculturalguanajuato http://bit.ly/issuumahg
