Sexuality - with the
multiplication of its public
icons and the open
debate of its private
practices has inundated
almost all areas of our
vision and shaded almost
all of our social behavior. Some, proud of their
generation, will defend that they were the ones to
have brought about this openness in the sixties.
In today's world, soap operas, the world of
commercial advertising, the glamour of the stars,
the most serious literature, the most pleasing
music and even magazines for fine ladies have
incorporated sexual desire and erotic energy as
a dynamic of relationships. This dynamic reflects
the social body together and is a first order
indication of (self) esteem. The debates on the
identity and fragility of sexual roles imposed by
society along with the polemics and campaigns
regarding AIDS and its prevention have ended
up deactivating those cultural taboos which
impeded us from seeing the importance of sex
not only for the individual, but also for an
emotionally mature and politically democratic
society.
Many museums of modern art, in their inherited
elitism, maintain themselves aloof from a
phenomenon so obvious not only in cultural life of
several recent generations, but also in the
repetoirs of modern art itself. Expositions like
Masculin Feminin, French Kiss, Amours, or
Skin..., realized by museums of the size of the
Centre Pompidou or the Cartier Foundation
have have given the theme distinct perspectives
but the same relevance.. In Mexico, even when
some expositions have been dedicated to the
body, an elusive attitude has always prevailed
toward the sexual energy that moves it and,
above all, a conservative attitude toward the
mental phantasms with which sex questions our
our modes of conduct. (With the exception the
participative examples from the Lesbian-Gay
Week organized by the Chopo Museum).
Contrary to this museological practice, a good
number of prestigious Mexican artists - even
some who are not young - have worked on
sexuality, desire and its representation without
any self censure. The youngest artists, perhaps
because of their youth, circulate without any
problem in a social venue where the erotic and
even the pornographic are present.
This exposition, entitled Erógena, proposes to
provide a place for these works and to the most
scabrous preoccupations that they incarnate.
We have departed from the artistic quality of the
work and of its inscription in the post vanguard
and not from a thematic principle or the exercise
of a minority representation. The show - explicit
in its radicalism - is directed toward adults who
are disposed to be confronted by its theme, the
modernity of its images and, above all, the
critical discourse that these images encourage.
Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil
Mexico City,
MX Mexico