Joyce Lanxin Zhao
[Interviewer]
Chunzi Wu
Leo L
[Editor]
Allen Young
07 OCT 2024
Lugar Común,
Oaxaca
Mexico is a huge country, with the U.S. to the north and Central America to the south. Northern regions focus on their ties to the U.S., while the south is more agricultural. This has created a gap between the two regions. My generation experienced a kind of forced migration, chasing the 'American Dream,' and this led to a certain disdain for rural life. Right now, there's an interesting discussion about mezcal: while it brings some economic stability, it also leads to gentrification and damages the land because of monoculture.
Lugar Común is in a small neighborhood where I grew up after my parents moved from the countryside to the city. It’s a self-organized project that creates initiatives to address the needs of the local community. It’s been around for almost 13 years now. One of the most transformative moments was when we received the 2016-2019 grant from Arts Collaboratory, a Dutch organization that supports social initiatives in the Global South. With that grant, we created the Laboratory for Cooperative Cultures ('Laboratorio de Culturas Cooperativas'), a space where anyone could develop a community-driven project. Our goal was to bring the collaborative and self-management practices from rural areas into the city. We saw art as a great way to bring the community together, and during those two years, thanks to the grant, we organized all kinds of activities: reading workshops for kids, gardens, film screenings, waste collection programs, always based on what the community needed. That flexibility was one of Lugar Común's biggest strengths. We didn’t impose our own agenda or take a top-down approach, like many traditional educational programs do.
Oaxaca has a growing contemporary art market, but it mostly focuses on modern and traditional art, with a lot of emphasis on the land and magical realism. This kind of gentrification has set certain expectations around art, though it has also helped a lot of young artists get their careers going. Additionally, with Francisco Toledo’s passing, there’s been this kind of masculine competition over who will take his place.
Aligning the agendas of visual artists and local community members can be one of the most significant challenges for collaborative projects. Artists usually have their own creative agendas and grants that come with deadlines and goals. This often clashes with the slower pace of community time in Oaxaca, which is more tied to celebrations and rituals, and it leads to some tension. We often deal with frustrations and obstacles since things don’t always go as planned. It’s important to learn how to handle these challenges, because, in the end, what nourishes that plasticity is all the subjectivity of the people involved.
'Jardín Común' project; P hotograph courtesy of the artist
After finishing our fellowship with Arts Collaboratory in 2019, we decided to take a break. We took up the project again in 2021 and created a new space called Jardín Común (Common Garden) with the support of PAC (Patronato de Arte Contemporáneo), where we collaborated with architect Diego Borrell on the design. We built it over two weeks with neighbors, volunteers, and friends. Currently, Lugar Común consists of Naxhielli, Beto, Moi, Wendy, and me. We all grew up in the neighborhood. The most active member is Naxhielli, who joined Lugar Común after graduating from university. Thanks to the support of Arts Collaboratory, we were able to offer her a full-time salary. She is now the project director, which makes me very happy.
Museo Tamayo,
Mexico City
In Latin America, the focus in museology is currently on challenging the colonial roots of museums. I’m interested in critical museology and mediation, and I noticed that issues in the Tamayo museum were a lot like what I saw at Lugar Común. For example, the divisions within the museum staff: from curators to cleaners, the whole team works in the same space but rarely talks. I wanted to create ways for everyone to connect with each other. In 2021, during the pandemic, I created an online miniseries for the museum's 40th anniversary
Within the Education Department, ten years ago the budget was much larger. When I joined, there were nine people on the team, but now there are only three. Back then, we had one director and several workshop leaders who handled activities like guided tours. In 2019, we switched to a model with just project leaders, with each person responsible for specific tasks, such as planning activities for children or building academic partnerships. This gave us leadership in our own areas. Our goal has been to integrate artistic creation into our work, focusing more on education driven by artistic practice, instead of conventional educational methods.
At the Tamayo, most visitors are regulars, not people who come by chance. One goal of the program was to create a network to encourage visits from audiences who are usually excluded from museums—for example, by inviting a group from an indigenous community. While there is interest in getting more visits from indigenous communities, there are still many systemic contradictions in the museum's structure that exclude them. It’s a challenge to bridge that gap.
I’ve tried to identify what generates shared value at the Tamayo. To me, the museum's collection is essential, because it brings people together. One example of this was a project in which a piece was taken out of storage, and a curator was invited to research it and write a short essay, which was then translated into indigenous languages. This process involved opening up restricted areas, like the museum's storeroom. We often discuss accessibility in extreme cases, like a child from someplace far away who can't visit the museum, but smaller issues matter too, like the fact that the storeroom is closed to everyone, which also excludes the broader community. This cycle of small actions helped build stronger ties between curators and the public, creating shared value through interaction with the artworks and collaborative study.
I’m always looking for ways to bring in more collaborative practices both inside and outside the museum. The traditional model puts educators at a disadvantage, because they only get access to exhibitions after the opening. However, the essay and translation project has built a bridge between curatorial work and artistic education. Within the Education team, the lack of a director has also caused a breakdown in authority, though it’s interesting to note that not everyone is used to this way of working. People often feel the need to have someone in charge. I believe a hybrid model that combines both horizontal and vertical elements works best.
Asia Art Archive,
Hong Kong
The residency came about through an invitation from Susanna Chung, the Director of the Education Department at the Asia Art Archive, after we met at Documenta. I have a particular interest in the Philippines because of its historical ties to Mexico, as both were part of New Spain and linked by trade routes like the Manila Galleon. In Mexico, we often look toward North America or Europe, but I was curious to learn more about our connection with Asia. So I studied migration narratives from Vietnam to Hong Kong in the 1970s, as well as Roberto Chávez's archive about the Green Papaya project in the Philippines.
In large cities like Hong Kong, many artistic practices share spaces and resources in the center, which allows them to remain visible in the local scene. But I was more interested in rural initiatives. I discovered one collective near the border with China that runs a café to support itself while working on art projects, and found others spread across small islands, like a bookstore that also engages in independent publishing. In the city, one notable difference compared to Mexico was how new conditions in China are pushing collectives to operate underground. This also happens in Mexico, but not as much. I was especially shocked by the repression I witnessed. For example, one day at Victoria Park, I watched artists being detained. Yet this moment also felt quite powerful to me, as it demonstrated how repression can fuel deep and meaningful artistic creation.
I believe building communities through art is something universal, and the challenges we face are often quite similar no matter where we are. It’s definitely easier to fall back on patterns inherited from the Western art canon than to question them. But from what I’ve learned, it’s possible to rethink and reshape these structures, even within institutions like museums, which often carry a kind of 'colonial karma'. During my residency, I also felt that the Asia Art Archive plays a key role in connecting and bridging these cultural spheres. The activities and programs they run in Hong Kong really help shift the focus of contemporary art education beyond traditionally dominant, often colonial, narratives.
One of the most valuable gifts from Lugar Común is the sense of belonging it gave me. Since leaving Oaxaca, I’ve joined different groups where I play the role of a guest, whereas at Lugar Común I was the host and worked as a mediator to help other artists build meaningful relationships with the community. Now I find myself on the outside, working with local contacts across various communities. This shift allows me to explore different ways in which connections are being formed.
The exhibition Jonah grew out of my research on the trafficking of totoaba fish maws, often called "cocaine of the sea" because of their high value and rarity. This species, which is native to Mexico, is smuggled through Hong Kong, a huge international port with very little regulation. That inspired me to create a mural featuring different endangered species used in gourmet soup in Asia, such as shark fins, the golden coin turtle, and the vaquita, which is almost extinct, because it gets caught in the illegal nets used for totoaba fishing. I was really struck by the idea of one species being driven to extinction because of the illegal hunting of another. The exhibition ties together these stories and evidence of the connections between Asia and the Americas, like the Nao de China, along with some “monsters” I created to symbolize these links.
I called the exhibition Jonah because I wanted to reinterpret the biblical story of the prophet. Instead of setting it in the Mediterranean, where there wouldn't be whales or storms of such magnitude, I imagined Jonah being swallowed by a whale in the Pacific, traveling from Mexico to Asia. In this version, I framed Jonah as the first navigator of the Pacific. I wanted to shift the story’s context to highlight a possible connection between Mexico, the Americas, and Asia.