Past

Sights and Sounds: Mexico

Feb. 27 – Mar. 26, 2015

Sights and Sounds: Mexico features new work by Tania Candiani, Jorge Scobell, Edgardo Aragón, and Jorge de la Garza, selected by María Inés Rodríguez.

he artist is a witness of his or her time — bystander and critic, and above all analyst. The artist questions the cultural construction of history through art. Over the past few decades, shifts in the political, social, economic, and cultural landscape have shaken the American continent and the world. These changes — and their impact in the public sphere — provide recurrent themes in contemporary art.

These video works by Mexican artists reflect on communities in constant flux, facing critical situations and forced to find strategies of survival. As the Martinican novelist, poet, and critic Édouard Glissant once wrote, “The role of the artist is to do certain things in the spirit of imagination, and to change something on the visible level.”

María Inés Rodríguez
Curator

María Inés Rodríguez (b. Zipaquira, Colombia, 1968) is Director of the CAPC, Musée d’Art Contemporain, Bordeaux. She was formerly Chief Curator of the Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo–UNAM, Mexico City(2011–13) and Chief Curator of MUSAC, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, Spain (2009–11). In 2008–9, she was Curator of the Satellite Program at the Jeu de Paume, Paris, as well as editor of the French art publication Point d’Ironie.

About Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video

This long-term series offers a rotating selection of vigorous film and video works by contemporary artists from around the world — with a particular emphasis on work being made outside western Europe and the United States.

Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video is a long-term presentation of new film and video works made in the sphere of the visual arts. The series offers a rotating selection of vigorous works by contemporary artists from around the world. It introduces New York audiences to the latest developments in filmmaking within the art context and underlines the Jewish Museum’s holistic and global approach to the understanding and presentation of art and culture.

Sights and Sounds takes advantage of the straightforward way film and video travel: shipped on discs or streamed online, these works provide an instant connection to new creative practices from even the most remote locations.

Twenty-five international curators have selected new film and video work from their respective regions of the world—ranging from Argentina to Vietnam, Nigeria to Romania, New Zealand to China, and many places in between. Their picks are screened for one month each in the museum’s media center, which has been turned into a miniature cinema for the occasion.

The works in Sights and Sounds touch on themes significant to both Jewish culture and universal human experience: spirituality, exile, language, conflict, family, humor, history. The series creates a broad network of artistic expression and curatorial perspectives that takes stock of what is happening in film and video art at this moment in time across the globe—with a particular emphasis on work being made outside western Europe and the United States.

Sights and Sounds will culminate with a selection of highlights from the series. One work from each country will be presented in the gallery from February 5, 2016 to June 30, 2016.

Jens Hoffmann
Deputy Director
Exhibitions and Public Programs

#sightsandsounds

Installation view of Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video in the Goodkind Media Center. Photo by David Heald.

Exhibition highlights

Jorge Scobell, RH Reporte (HR Report), 2014, HD video, sound, 10 min., 34 sec., in Spanish with English subtitles. Artwork © Jorge Scobell, provided by the artist and Programa BBVA Bancomer – MACG Arte Actual
Edgardo Aragón, Exterminio (Annihilation), 2014, video, sound, 13 min., 17 sec. Artwork © Edgardo Aragón, provided by the artist and Laurel Gitlen, New York