Ulises Carrión, Gossip, Scandal and Good Manners, 1981, videostill, courtesy LIMA Amsterdam
Ulises Carrión, Gossip, Scandal and Good Manners, 1981, videostill, courtesy LIMA Amsterdam
Reflecting on some of the inventive and resourceful methods developed by Ulises Carrión in later life, Magalí Arriola’s presentation will revisit his practice in order to analyze the reception of his work within the burgeoning Mexican art scene of the late 1990s. Arriola draws parallels between Carrion’s notion of cultural strategies and the creative tactics developed by a younger generation of artists echoing or finding inspiration in his practice, as well as performances and events conceived by other artists of Carrion’s generation who, just like him, didn’t fit the local institutional scene of their time.
Carrion’s interest in the anonymous and the erratic, his approach to gossip and narration, his interest in cultural values, communication systems, and distributional networks were instrumental in his work and offer a link between two generations of artists who posed a series of critical questions around the role of the arts in a context that, for many years, remained preoccupied with the formal inscription of its cultural identity.
Magalí Arriola is an art critic and independent curator. She was a curator at the Fundación Jumex Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico City, where she organized exhibitions of artists such as Danh Vo (2014), James Lee Byars (2013, co-produced with MoMA-PS1), and Guy de Cointet (2012). She was chief curator of Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, where she curated exhibitions and projects with artists such as Roman Ondák, Joachim Koester, Claire Fontaine, Adrià Julia, and Julio Morales. Arriola has published extensively and has contributed to publications such as Artforum, Frieze, Mousse, Manifesta Journal, and The Exhibitionist. Arriola lives in Mexico City.
