The Ministry of Culture of the Government of Mexico and the National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature (INBAL) have unveiled the Mexican pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2021 entitled Displacements ("Desplazamientos"), a curatorial work led by Isadora Hastings, Natalia de La Rosa, Mauricio Rocha, and Elena Tudela.
Following an open call that received 153 projects from 14 states of the Mexican Republic, 12 proposals were selected, seeking to highlight to the world, the contribution of contemporary Mexican architecture. Displacements starts as a space that proposes solutions on how architecture can help us in the midst of cultural, linguistic, and territorial diversity, opinions, criticisms, practices, histories, and different profiles, in response to the question: How will we live together? the Venice Biennale 2021 theme proposed by curator Hashim Sarkis.
The Technical Committee was comprised of Lucina Jiménez, Marcos Mazari Hiriart, Mauricio Rocha Iturbide, María de los Ángeles Vizcarra de los Reyes, Alejandra Caballero Cervantes, Pablo Landa Ruiloba and Gabriela Gil Verenzuela.
After the temporary suspension due to the pandemic, the 17th Architecture Biennale was reactivated by the general coordination in Italy and the participating countries were invited to adapt the projects and participate in the new ways of communication and production, derived from pandemic measures. For this reason, INBAL pondered the relevance of continuing with the Mexico Pavilion project, given the progress made by the curatorial team during the pandemic, in a context such as the one the country faces, with multiple realities in conflict. This pavilion initially raises the question of "displacements", which arise mainly from adverse conditions such as evident inequalities, environmental deterioration, risk of disasters, and various types of violence (economic, social, racial, and gender) linked to concrete spaces. These transfer processes occur at different scales of time and space that transcend borders and limits, and in their passage through different geographies and territories, they draw pauses, thresholds, and changes of course.
According to the curators, "the objective is to explore ways of designing and building spaces of belonging, reconciliation, narration, exchange, recovery, assimilation, forgiveness and resistance derived from displacement. The architectural design is conceived as a border space of socio-environmental systems to accommodate possible expanded collectivities. Its design reflects the conditions of scarcity that characterize our local and global reality and uses experience to explore the role of displacement in architecture".
"The curatorial proposal is based on a processual and collective model that attends to the local political, social, environmental, and economic context, based on a creative laboratory. This laboratory, based on the dialogue between the curatorial committee and the participants, is developed as a space that erases the notion of authorship, under a group production directed and coordinated by the curatorial team that, through successive collective approaches and fragments, constructs a totality."
Check out the 12 selected projects to be featured at the Mexican pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2021.
Reading Rooms / Fernanda Canales
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Abandonment Copies / Sandra Cecilia Calvo Guzmán
Mendoza Kitchen / Rosario Hernández Argüello
Common Unity / Rozana Montiel
Colonia Donceles Refurbishment / JC Arquitectura + O'H Abogados
Universidad Iberoamericana CDMX's Regenerative Incidence Projects Workshop
Tórax / Andrés Soliz Paz + Pavel Escobedo
A School to Educate with Dignity / Judith Meléndrez Bayardo + Gabriel Konzevik Cabid + Antonio Pla Pérez
How Can We Sleep Together? / Katia Marcela Zapata Rodríguez + Roberto Núñez
Pavilion at Eco 2013 / Magui Peredo + Salvador Macías + Diego Quirarte
Eco Pétreo / Román Jesús Cordero Tovar + Izbeth Mendoza
Rural School of Arts / Estudio MMX (Jorge Arvizu, Ignacio del Río, Emmanuel Ramírez y Diego Ricalde)
We invite you to check out ArchDaily's comprehensive coverage of the Venice Architecture Biennale 2021, and watch our official playlist on Youtube featuring exclusive interviews with architects and curators of the Biennale.
.jpg?1620676312 "Mexican Pavilion at the 2021 Venice Biennale Explores the Value of Mexican Contemporary Architecture")
