Untitled

12 December 2013 – 11 January 2014

AN ANTIPODE SO CLOSE... Mexican Contemporary Art

CURATORJulia Villaseñor Bell

ARTISTS Artemio •

Tania Candiani •Roberto de la Torre •

Demián Flores •Arturo Hernández Alcázar •

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer •Armando Miguelez •

Manuel Rocha Iturbide •TRIODO (Marcela Armas, Gilberto Esparza, Ivan Puig) •

REPORT


As an intercultral experiment, An Antipode so Close... proved to be a rich and eye-opening experience. The Vadehra Art Gallery hosted works by 11 Mexican artists during a one month exhibition but also received two of them in India for a residency-cum-exhibition. The presence of Manuel Rocha Iturbide and Roberto de la Torre allowed different types of public to engage with practitioners of different disciplines that are being strongly developped in the Mexican art scene.Not only an exhibition but a short-time laboratory that engaged curators, professors, students, general public and other artists to get to know a culture so far yet so similar.

This report focuses on the exhibition in its traditional form, in the residency nature of the artist’s visits and the collaborative work that emerged and in the outreach events organised during the time of the exhibition to re-activate the space.

We had the opportunity to work with many people from the Delhi art scene whom I would like to thank for their support in many different ways:

Bharat Arvind Blessy AugustineAtul BhallaBabu Eshwar PrasadBhooma PadmanabhanTeseo FournierShefalee JainLokesh KhodkeSujith Mallick (WALA Collective)Anne ManiglierParibartana Mohanty (WALA Collective)Shilpi SharmaVidya ShivadasMaria José Villaseñor.... and all the Vadehra Art Gallery team

Special thanks to Mr. Raju Shroff, Honorary Consul of Mexico in India and Mr Jaime Nualart, Ambassador to Mexico in India for their invaluable support. Without their faith in the project this adventure wouldn’t have been possible.

AN ANTIPODE SO CLOSE...Mexican Contemporary Art

Artemio, Tania Candiani*, Roberto de la Torre*, Demián Flores, Arturo Hernández Alcázar, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Armando Miguelez,

Manuel Rocha Iturbide*, TRIODO (Marcela Armas, Gilberto Esparza, Ivan Puig)

Curated by Julia Villaseñor Bell

12 December 2013 - 11 January 2014

VADEHRA ART GALLERYD-53, Defence Colony, New Delhi - 110024

We would like to thank the Ministry of Foreign Relations in Mexico, the Embassy of Mexico in India and CONACULTA as well as UPL Ltd. for their support.

*artists are part of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores of the Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, FONCA (National Fund for Culture and the Arts, Mexico)We would like to thank the Ministry of Foreign Relations in Mexico, the Embassy of Mexico in

India and CONACULTA as well as UPL Ltd. for their support.

Armando Miguelez, Rorschach América and Antipodes Poster and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Performance Review UBS.


Arturo Hernández Alcázar, No Trabajes Nunca - Never Work

TRIODO (Marcela Armas, Gilberto Esparza, Iván Puig), Fable of a comeback


Tania Candiani, La Magdalena

Demián Flores, installation view


Artemio’s Mex Attack postcard. Edition of 4 different models free for the public

Installation view of Fallen Wages(Arturo Hernández Alcázar) with the help of Harish Prakash


Manuel Rocha Iturbide installing his Tabla sound piece. Artemio’s marble mandalas installation view.


Roberto de la Torre and Manuel Rocha in residence at Vadehra Art Gallery. Manuel Rocha’s Tabla sound piece installation view.



Exhibition Opening

We had the opportunity to receive two important Mexican artists participating in the exhibition. Manuel Rocha Iturbide and Roberto de la Torre reached Delhi in time to explore the city and create a site specific art piece for the show. Many artists, curators and other interested individuals participated in making this experience unique by meeting the artists and giving them thei imput in their practice as well as showing them interesting and un-seen parts of the city.

Thanks to the kind assistance of Delhi based artist Atul Bhalla we were able to take both visiting artists Manuel Rocha Iturbide and Roberto de la Torre amongst other colleagues, artist and curators to very interesting and unknown parts of Old Delhi. Atul Bhalla had previously participated in a residency in Old Delhi and was able to guide us and show us the inner parts of this amazing city.

Thanks to this trip and a meeting in Seemapuri with the WALA Collective (Paribartana Mohanty and Sujit Mallick it was later decided that Roberto de la Torre would perform in Old Delhi and Seemapuri with the help of a documentation team (Shilpi Sharma, Babu Eswar Prasad and Teseo Fournier)


Exhibition as Residency

After meeting a couple of artist and collectives, getting to know different places and having discussions with curators Julia Villaseñor and Bhooma Padmanabhan, Roberto de la Torre decided to perform in Old Delhi and Seemapuri.His performance, Peter England consisted in him empersonating a wealthy, elegantly dressed character that walked around the city. However, this character appears not to have a head. Roberto’s use of a mirror he carried on his shoulder reflected his surroundings but had him walking around the city as a headless man. The performance was shot in different locations and the public on the streets was curious to see and follow this headless man. Roberto then gave an artist presentation as part of the outreach program of the exhibition in order to speak about his work as a performer and the experience as

Peter England in Delhi. He later travelled to Bombay where he continued his performance in many places of the city.



Performance by Roberto de la Torre in Old Delhi and Seemapuri. Peter England


Shooting team for Roberto de la Torre’s performance in Seemapuri. Shilpi Sharma and Teseo Fournier, photo by Babu Eswar Prasad.

Artist Tania Candiani and Artemio had what we could call a collaboration at a distance. Both artist had instruction based works that were created for the exhibition or during the show thanks to the collaboration with Delhi based artists, craftsmen and curators.

Photographs taken during the instruction video piece by Tania Candiani. Her piece La Magdalena was shot in the Magdalena river in Colombia. She asked Julia Villaseñor to do the same with the gramophone, this time playing a Sindhi Bhajan on a boat in the Yamuna.

Atul Bhalla again volunteered to take the team to the banks of the Yamuna to shoot the same shot one more time. Babu Eswar Prasad and Teseo Fournier also helped in the realization of this video project. The raw video was sent to the artist and the piece will have two versions of the gramophone floating in two rivers, very different from each other, but that contain the same problematics regarding water and the use of it.


Collaborations Mexico/Delhi at a distance

Artemio’s collaboration at a distance consisted in the creation of five marble inlay plates from Agra made with his Mandala designs. The gallery contacted a craftsman who could produce these designs and had them ready for the show.

There were four postcard designs also taken from Artemio’s series Mex Attacks. These postcards were available at the exhibition space for free and people were encouraged to take as many as they liked.

Armando Miguelez’s Antipodes poster was printed in the same logic as the postcards and was available in the exhibition space.


Later during the residency, Manuel Rocha Iturbide was invited by Amity University to give a lecture for their art students on Sound Art.Manuel Rocha is a known scholar and researcher in the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and a pioneer in the historiography of this domain. His presentation THE EXPANSION OF SOUND SCULPTURE AND SOUND INTALLATION IN ART was received with great enthusiasm from part of the university.

These activities have ignited the desire to bring Mr. Rocha Iturbide again to India and have him give longer and more thorough lectures in different Universities. Ambedkar University is exploring this opportunity.


Outreach activities

Benefiting from the presence of the artists in India, different interactions with university students took place. Manuel Rocha Iturbide gave a guided walthrough in the gallery with the students from Ambedkar university thanks to the contact with Shefalee Jain.

Manuel explained his piece in the show and the concept of sound art from his point of view as a composer and musician. He then showed a selection of sound artists’ videos he had curated and then engaged in interesting exchanges with students who were exploring this medium

Guided walk and lecture by Manuel Rocha Iturbide


Exhibition walkthrough with Parul Vadehra

Hosted at the FICA Reading Room, the artist presentation by Armando Miguélez Giambruno explored his experience as an international artist whose work started in Mexico and then moved to India. His work concentrates on the ways physical environments are organized with a specific focus on cartography and systems of world measurements. In

addition Miguélez’s work also contemplates issues of personal narrative, displacement, cultural contrasts and identity documents. Formally his work is interdisciplinary combining at times photography, drawing, installation and sound sculpture.


Artis presentation by Armando Miguélez Giambruno


Seminar on Mexican Art by Armando Miguélez and Julia VillaseñorWhere an eagle is eating a snake perched on a cactus

The last event of the outreach program for An Antipode so Close... was a one day seminar given by curator Julia Villaseñor and artist Armando Miguélez on Mexican art from the muralist movements and post-revolution period (1921-1968) to contemporary art scene today (1968 -2013).

Through the work of more than 40 artist presented during the seminar, the public had the chance to engage with a different artistic context and learn from important movements present in Mexico in the past as well as today. Through the study of the social, political and economical context, the seminar explored the vibrant artistic scene of Mexico accross time.


Print CloseThu, Dec 19 2013. 07 11 PM IST

‘An Antipode So Close...’ is an attempt to showcase ‘theother West’

From Mexico, with loveNine artists showcase audio-visual pieces to introduce and promote their country’s art

Pooja Chaturvedi

One of the earliest soundscapes that acclaimed Mexican soundartist Manuel Rocha Iturbide made in India was that of a streetbarber in Jaipur in 1988. The sound of his swift and incessantscissors instantly revived memories of Mexico, only the process wasmuch slower. “In Mexico, the barbers cut at a relatively low speed, butthe sameness of the sounds made me realize that despite being onopposite sides of the globe, these two countries are so similar interms of culture, food, street life, colours and history,” says Iturbide.

Iturbide is back in India with another soundscape, this time fromDelhi. Staying in Delhi’s upmarket Greater Kailash colony, he hasrecorded various sounds, from street hawkers to crows and ofcourse, the honking, and mixed them with the tabla to create avibrant sound piece. His sound piece is on show at the groupexhibition, An Antipode So Close..., at the Vadehra Art Gallery in theCapital.

At the show, supported by Mexio’s ministry of foreign relations and itsembassy here, nine Mexican artists are displaying audio-visual

pieces to introduce and promote their country’s art in India. The other artists are Artemio (who uses only one name), Tania Candiani,Roberto de la Torre, Demián Flores, Arturo Hernández Alcázar, Rafael Lozano Hemmer, Armando Miguelez and TRIODO.

“The geographical distance of these two nations has for long made it difficult to set up a direct cultural dialogue, uninterrupted and notinterpreted by Western media. In a sense this exhibition presents a chance to engage with and understand the ‘other West’,” says JuliaVillaseñor Bell, curator, Vadehra Art Gallery.

Mumbai-based Miguelez, for instance, is showcasing a work done in 2004—a set of 25 maps of countries on the American continent whichalso represent the image of psychiatric charts used to diagnose patients. “Through my work I want to draw attention to the fact that the ideaof nationalism is dominated by the West and how countries like India and Mexico are experimenting with it in the age of capitalism,” hesays.

Mexico-based Alcázar highlights some of the problems of capitalism through sculptures made of discarded materials, bringing to light thefailures of the system that created them in the first place. Artemio’s videos and installations question the cynicism of modern culture,violence, war and modernization.

Lozano Hemmer, who develops interactive installations that are at the intersection of architecture and performance art, showcases lightand shadow works that are inspired by phantasmagoria, carnival and animatronics and are “antimonuments for alien agency”, he says.Flores brings the focus back on Mexico with paintings that represent old and new avatars of the country and include various mythologicalfigures and pop culture images.

“Due to the cultural and historical similarities of India and Mexico, many things and art pieces won’t look much different, and this is what thisexhibition is about: to see Mexico from a different point of view,” says Torre, who is showcasing his video installation Windows 69, made in2004, at the show.

An Antipode So Close..., 11am-7pm, is on view till 11 January at the Vadehra Art Gallery, D-53, Defence Colony, Delhi (46103550). Thegallery is closed on Sundays.

Print Close Window

Connecting LinePallavi Chattopadhyay Posted online: Tue Dec 17 2013, 05:07 hrs

Mexican artist Arturo Hernandez Alcazar’s work is often a culmination of his observations as an urban pedestrian. In

Fallen Wages, he has used an axe to split a wall with one rupee coins placed on top of the wooden handle. These

coins, which are of little value today, are symbolic of the money given to labourers, who are often underpaid.

The exhibit is part of “An Antipode So Close...” on display at Vadehra Art Gallery. “Fallen Wages shows how the

balance of a nation’s economy is dependent on these labourers. Despite this, they are given meagre wages, which

are low in value, much like the one-rupee coin,” says curator Julia Villasenor Bell. The exhibition explores how India

and Mexico, despite being on opposite sides of the globe, have a similar history of indigenous civilisations, colonial

rule, multiple languages and faiths, apart from being rapidly developing economies.

The inspiration for the title of the show comes from the Greek words “anti” and “pose”, which in geography is used to

define two places on the Earth’s surface that are diametrically opposite to each other. A connecting straight line

running through the centre of the earth joins these two points and 11 contemporary Mexican artists have tried to

interpret this line by exploring the similarities in political and social forces shaping the two nations.

Another work by Alcazar titled Never Work comprises sheets of paper and a stamp made by the artist in five

languages (Russian, Spanish, French, English and Hindi). It gives viewers a chance to stamp their bodies or pieces

of paper to remind them of not letting work become the only dominant factor in their life.

Another artist Artemio sent his designs to artists in Agra and allowed them to interpret his designs, which had

symbols of rifles, grenades and bombs and were shaped as a mandala. The work Bailarinas (From the Mandalas

Series) is set on a marble plate with symbols of rifle inlays. “A mandala is symbolic of peace whereas rifles only

cause destruction. The artist has tried to show how weapons rule our lives, and it is time we reinterpret them,” says

Bell.

The exhibition is on display till January 11 at Vadehra Art Gallery,

D-53 Defence Colony. Contact: 46103550/46103551

Press Coverage


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An ongoing exhibition at Vadehra ArtGallery features works by contemporaryMexican artists. They trace problems facedby India and Mexico. Neeti Nigam reports

The contemporary art from Mexico is not as well-known in this part of the world as are its otherexports — spicy cuisine, vibrant music and dance,and of course actress Salma Hayek. But thanks toglobalisation, Internet and love for art, Indian andMexican artists are discovering similaritiesbetween the two nations. Apart from the obvious,

well-known facts, there are other common invisible elements that bind the social consciousness of bothnations and are well-crafted in the exhibition, An Antipode So Close.

Antipode literally means the diametrically opposite points of any given place on earth. Despite located onthe opposite sides of the globe, the art sensibilities, aesthetic poetry and music bridge the gap betweenIndia and Mexico. By using an axe on the wall and Rs 1 coins on the floor, artist Arturo Hernandez Alcazarin his work Fallen Wages has shown how labourers of both the nations are underpaid and their contributionin these developing economies are looked down upon. The Rs 1 coin is used as a metaphor for theselabourers. “A single rupee might not value much, but as the number increases, the value increases, too,”said the artist. Another work of Arturo, Never Work, shows a rubber stamp, ink pillow and paper. Whilethe art engages viewers to stamp word ‘Never Work’ on paper or wall, it depicts how stamp is a symbol ofbureaucracy.

Curator Julia Villasenor Bell, who has been living in the Capital for three years, feels that both thecountries are enchanted by works of the Western nations and they do not value art in their own lands. “Ihave worked in a lot of countries and the kind of artwork artists from developing economies are showingare outstanding. The economic disparity and social difference are well-shown in their works. In thisexhibition, you’ll see what comes out of Mexican sensibility is in the Indian context,” said Julia. “The artscene in Mexico is same as was in Berlin in the 1990s. A lot of museums are coming up in the city and I feelin some years, Mexico would be the art capital of the world,” she added.

The contemporary Mexican art scene is indeed socially intense and politically charged. The emergingworks are playful yet profound. There is underlying theme to each exhibit. Not only the artists areredefining Mexican identity and addressing global issues but are bringing the aesthetic side and analternative vision of Mexico, quite unknown to the world.

The exhibition includes artists who explore different materials, use technology and social interventions.Artist Roberto De La Torre has put up a video art installation of a scene where he made some 60 peoplepush and pull windows. “My idea is to reflect light as well as capture expressions of people who felt that the

Printed From

BEST OF BOTH CULTURES

Monday, 16 December 2013 | Neeti Nigam

city is facing an earthquake, similar to the disastrous 1985,” he informed.

Some artists have shown similar motifs or works common in both cultures. In artist Demian Flores Tattos’ work, he has applied serigraph on gold leaf and carved wicked faces like skull, pirates. Artist Manuel Rocha Iturbide’s installation displays six tablas playing morning, afternoon and night ragas. Artist Artemio beautifully engraved signs of guns, bullets and other weapons on marble. “The world knows how beautifully Indian artisans work on marble. Inspired from the same art of Pietra dura, Artemio has put signs of violence on marble. Such elements are universal and steeped in our history,” said Julia.

The title takes inspiration from Octavio Paz’ essay The Antipodes of Coming and Going from his book In Light of India. The exhibition continues till January 11.


Schriem –Intervened Musical Score” with the Indian percussion instrument, the “tabla”. Three traditional Indian drums - tabla - play a pre-recorded and digitally reproduced percussion symphony by “a simple electronic simulation” technique. The beats play in three moods — morning, afternoon and evening ragas. The music is graphically manipulated on notation sheets with a series of erasures creating a new visual calligraphy— using elements of fluxus sounds to open a dialogue on emptiness and void. It works on the principle that “nothing remains the same if something of universal value is erased”— destroying an existing form to create a new one. Rocha recorded the symphony in a day’s recording at a South Delhi studio.

“I wanted the artists to capture the spirit of the antipode and yet highlight how similar the two nations are. India and Mexico have a lot in common socially and culturally despite the fact they are antipodes on the Indian Ocean,” says curator of the show, Julia Villasenor Bell. The history of colonization of Mexico may be older than that of India — but the two nations have the same social and economic contexts rooted in the postmodern.

The disparity between the rich and the poor, economic imbalance and eco-degradation are the threads of a common malaise — of unplanned development — which confront both India and Mexico. “The Mexican art scene is socially and politically charged. The works emerging from the new artists are edgy, playful and extremely poetic. The artists are engaged in social and artistic movements, rethinking Mexican identity while addressing social issues,” Bell said.

The idea was to bring out the contemporary trends in Mexican art that are helping the art forms free themselves from “legacies of history” and create new contiguous iconography with the world, the curator explained

Madhusree's Blog

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Mexican art creates new resonating icons in India onantipodal turf

India-Art/Diplomcy

By MadhusreeChatterjee New Delhi

Cross pollination isthe new wave ininternational art. Anexposition of multi-media art by nine

contemporary Mexican artists at the Vadehra ArtGallery in the national capital has brought thegeographical antipodes — India and Mexico — on ashared cultural stage. The works on show have tried toexplore a wide range of socio-cultural similaritiesbetween the two nations with Indian visual metaphorsaround Nobel Laureate Octavio Paz’ literary perception,“An antipode So Close”— from his essay, “Antipodesof Coming and Going” from the “Light of India”. Pazserved as the Mexican envoy to India in 1962.

One of the commonalities that binds Mexico to India —two emerging economies coping with the pace of post-colonial development issues and post modern aestheticethos — is environment. Ecology provides sustenanceon two levels — as a source of lament because of itsdegradation and as a fountain spring of artisticexpression for a whole generation of socially-committedpractitioners of contemporary Mexican art like MarcelaArmas, Gilberto Esparza and Ivan Puig. The trio in theirseries, “Triodo”, refers to the vanishing natural ecologyof Mexico and India – around the water bodies – as thecontext for their visual installations.

Artist Marcela Armas combines fantasy with visualreality in her work, “Fable of a Comeback” — aninstallation of video, animation and a resin model of

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The animation evokes nostalgia for what was there on the coast once upon a time — and now no more. It extends into a solid installation of a whale bone in memory of the mammal that is near extinct on the waters off the Mexican coast. Artist Tania Candiani, in her photography-sound instrument installation, made at a residency in Colombia, pays tribute to a scene from Warner Herzog’s movie, “Fitzcarraldo (1982)”. Candiani connects a river, a boat and music as symbols of fragmented progress. A boat cruises on the Magdalena river with a gramophone playing classical music — three contrasting images symbolizing the haphazard drift of development in Mexico, which is said to languish in the shadow of United States of America.

In the Indian adaptation, Candiani uses Sindhi ghazal lamenting the slow decline of the river. The twin problems of modernization and eco-degradation are endemic in developing nations like Mexico, India, south east Asia and in BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) bloc. A gramophone with a vinyl record conveys the impression of sound while the boat denotes movement. Progress has to be imagined — as unrelated as the gramophone and the boat.

Politics is the boon and the bane of the developing world — its consciousness colours the wave arts. Mumbai-based multi media practitioner of arts Armando Miguelez plots a “homogenized set of nation-states in US” in his visual collage, “Rorschach America”. Rorschach charts are diagnostic tools for patients with psychiatric disorders. Miguelez distorts the national boundary of a group of 25 American states to comment on the notion of a nation in need of therapy in serigraphic prints on cardboard. He says the political and social hammering of political geographies have reduced nations into uniform shapes – truncated and mutilated.

Sound artist and composer Manuel Rocha Iturbide’s work digresses from Miguélez prediction of a bleak world of political dwarves. He synthesizes sound and vision to create a cross cultural installation in two parts — “JS Bach


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When the self and the other coincide in artABHIRUP DAM 14th Dec 2013

ntipodes are the diametricallyopposite points of any givenplace on earth. The exactantipode of Mexico liessomewhere in the IndianOcean, below the lower tip ofthe Indian subcontinent.Approximation makes Indiathe closest to being anantipode to Mexico. VadehraArt Gallery's new exhibition, acollection of works by variousMexican artists, is called 'AnAntipode So Close...'. When one walks into the gallery, one cannot but recall thosewonderful lines written by Octavio Paz, whose essay The Antipodes of Coming and Goingfrom In Light of India, I learn later from the catalogue, inspired the title:

I go on a journey in galleries of sound, / I flow among the resonant presences / going, ablind man passing transparencies, /one mirror cancels me, I rise from another, / forestwhose trees are the pillars of magic, / under the arches of light I go among / the corridorsof a dissolving autumn

It is this very essence of a fleeting passage, nevertheless pregnant with deep significations

that can best define the experience of walking among the various images, sculptures andsound and video installations in the exhibition. Julia Villaseñor Bell, who has curated theexhibition says, "Antipodes have always pushed the human imagination to think about the'other'. The alien, yet familiar other, who perhaps shares more lived experiences with youthan you would have imagined." Come to think of it, India and Mexico share a social andpolitical past that has a lot in common. A long history of colonial rule, linguistic diversity,multiple ethnicities and social conditions mark the similarity in these antipodal geographiclocations.

One aspect that stands out is that Mexican art is socially aware and politically charged. Bellalso emphasised that very few Mexican artists stick to a medium and there is a constantflux of ideas, which makes them experiment with different forms. Take, for example, artistArtemio's pop-art productions where images of European Renaissance art have "MexAttacks" written over, in classic Mars Attacks font. Artemio also works with installation,performance and video, and one of his installations — concentric circles formed withdifferent guns — is particularly gripping. The ugliness of a weapon of destruction issmoothly glossed over by the aesthetic symmetry of the circles.

It is this emphasis, Bell says, on the aesthetic and the poetic in the face of a rapidlychanging world which, more than often, leaves one with images of horror than beauty that

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It is this emphasis, Bell says, on the aesthetic and the poetic in the face of a rapidly changing world which, more than often, leaves one with images of horror than beauty that forms the base of this exhibition. Armando Miguélez's serigraphs on cardboard called Rorschach America are a fascinating interplay of the psychological and the national. The idea of a nation deeply permeates American society and this clever turning back of a country's own invention, to question its primary obsession, is fascinating.

The catalogue of the exhibition reads, "The works in this exhibition thus attempt to raise important questions about the Mexican context of today: How do we speak about the difficult conditions of Mexican society? What are the spaces of catharsis? How do we grieve the dead and heal the wounded collective memory? How do we denounce our rage? What is the place of the poetic and the aesthetic?" These are questions that perhaps can only be answered through art, as the only reaction to good literature has always been new literature. Yet, the show makes us understand that in a rapidly globalising world, where the forces of the free market fill our psyches with glorious images of consumption, a global unification of dissent and resistance is incumbent.


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A new show brings contemporary Mexican art to India

Parallel connections

About a fortnight ago, Manuel Rocha Iturbide, a Mexican sound artist andcomposer, squatted in the middle of a square-shaped room and turned overa coil of electrical wire in his hands. “Maybe it’ll work, maybe it won’t,” he saidwith a laugh. The wires were attached to amplifiers, which in turn wereattached to six tablas, arranged in a circle to signify a clock. Inspired by theidea of ragas in classical Indian music, Manuel captured what he calls“soundscapes” of Delhi at different times of the day. He transferred these asrhythms that produced a light beat on each of the tablas. Iturbide is one ofthe artists featured in An Antipode So Close… at the Vadehra Art Gallery,an exhibition supported by the Mexican embassy.

The title of the exhibition is borrowed from Mexican writer, poet, and diplomatOctavio Paz’s essay titled “Antipodes of Coming and Going”, published in hisbook In Light of India. Paz was Mexico’s ambassador to India from 1962-68.Julia Villaseñor, curator at Vadehra Art Gallery and of this exhibition, saidthe idea of using the concept of antipodes has been with her since shecame to India in 2010, to intern at the gallery. “As a Mexican living in India, Ifind that it is like living on opposite sides of the world. But India reminds meof Mexico. I use this phrase ‘far away but close by’ to explain myunderstanding of the relationship between Mexico and India.”

In June, when Villaseñor travelled to Mexico, she spoke to artists there andasked them if they wanted to be a part of the exhibition. “They loved it,” shesaid. “Most of them had never have showcased their work in India. Therewas a curiosity about this country since it is unknown, and even when it isrepresented, it is through a prism of clichés and gross misunderstanding.

The rationale behind this exhibition, according to the curator, is to raiseawareness about the work being done by Mexican artists. She added thatsince both Mexico and India have a shared history of colonialism and facesimilar challenges in the area of development, “we can connect on thatlevel”.

This comes through in many of the works exhibited at the gallery. TaniaCandiani had clicked a photograph of an old phonograph sitting atop thebow of a fisherman’s boat in the Magdalena River in Colombia. Thephonograph was playing a classical piece at the time she clicked the photo.It was meant to be, as the curator put it, “a lamentation over this river thathas become polluted”. Villaseñor immediately thought of the Yamuna inDelhi. Now, Candiani’s photograph is accompanied by the same

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