For my first gallery visit during Zona Maco, I chose Proyectos Monclova, an influential contemporary art space located in Polanco, just north of the Museo Nacional de Antropología. Founded in 2005, the gallery has been a cornerstone of Mexico City’s artistic evolution, creating a dialogue between local and global art scenes and consistently elevating innovative, critical voices. With Zona Maco bringing international attention to the city, Proyectos Monclova felt like the perfect entry point into the week’s unfolding narrative.
The walk up to the gallery set the tone for what would be an emotional journey. Nestled in a blue, nondescript building typical of Mexico City, the space is unassuming from the outside—you don’t know what awaits behind the door. The moment I entered, I was greeted warmly by staff who handed me a free art guide to the city’s exhibitions and events. It felt like an invitation, not just to the gallery but to the city itself even though I do live here.
Walking through the entryway, the space opened up into an expansive, three-floor gallery. There were QR codes for reading exhibition texts, natural light flooding the hallways, and a rooftop lounge where you could breathe it all in afterward. Everything about the experience was welcoming yet polished—a balance between warmth and professionalism that Mexico City has perfected.
The first floor featured an exhibition by the collective Tercerunquinto, whose work is known for interrogating architecture, public memory, and the intersections of political and social spaces. Their installation was a sobering reflection on how Mexico City itself is shaped by natural and human forces—most notably, the earthquakes of 1985 and 2017. These events are embedded in the city’s collective consciousness, and the collective’s work captured both the physical and emotional aftershocks of those tragedies.
Their most striking piece was Efemérides, a large mosaic-like wall made from reclaimed wood and architectural fragments salvaged from buildings affected by earthquakes. The wood panels were arranged in angular, fragmented patterns, chaotic at first glance but with a deeper, almost celestial logic upon closer inspection. Inlaid among the panels were brass constellations mapping the night sky during the moments of these catastrophic events. Nearby, smaller works used brass and stone to create abstract representations of urban infrastructure, suggesting the tension between destruction and reconstruction.
The room felt like an architect’s eulogy, paying tribute to what had been lost while acknowledging the resilience needed to rebuild. The earthly debris and cosmic constellations linked the destruction on the ground with something divine, as if suggesting that the chaos we experience on Earth is part of a larger, incomprehensible order. It wasn’t just a mourning of the past—it was a recognition of survival.
What stuck with me was the sense that fragmentation is necessary for transformation. The materials had witnessed devastation but were now part of a new creation, one that carried both the pain of the memories and the very tangible hope of starting again. Tercerunquinto’s work held the weight of collective trauma but also the collective resilience required to rebuild a city and to heal the heart of a civilization.
Climbing the stairs to the second floor, I was hit with a sudden memory of walking into my painting studio back in art school—the mix of clean air and chemicals, the anticipation of creative discovery. Art school was freedom for me, a place where chaos had structure, and where artistic license wasn’t just allowed—it was celebrated. That same sense of possibility lingered in the air here.
This floor featured the work of Noé Martínez, whose pieces merge indigenous and European visual traditions to explore colonial violence and ancestral memory. One painting, “Las manos de mis ancestros me muestran mi historia,” featured ghostly handprints layered across a dark canvas, as though generations of ancestors were reaching through time. Reclaimed crystals dangled delicately from the canvas, their refracted light giving the work a spiritual aura. Martínez’s use of crystals as symbols of memory, resilience, and survival struck me deeply.
But what excited me most were the portraits where European rendering merged with indigenous stylization. In one work, indigenous motifs seemed to be overwritten by colonial forms—a stark reminder of historical erasure. Yet, the fact that the portrait existed at all felt defiant. It was as if Martínez were saying, “We survived. You tried to erase us, but here I am, painting the continuation of our story.” The intimate portraits, framed as if they were sacred family relics, made me feel like I had been invited into his world—not to witness its pain from afar, but to sit with it, honor it, and feel its triumphs.
After the emotional gravity of the first two floors, the third was like stepping into a celebration. Circe Irasema’s work transformed the space into a vibrant playground of color, texture, and installation. Rainbows stretched across canvases, a disco ball with fluttering eyelashes spun overhead, and makeup palettes exploded onto the surfaces like fireworks.
What fascinated me was how Irasema used makeup—not as a superficial accessory, but as an artistic medium that holds the power to transform identity. I thought about how makeup is often dismissed in the world as superficial, even though it functions as a form of painting on the body. Here, she elevated it, forcing us to confront beauty as both construction and art. The installations also played with how beauty is flattened in magazines and screens, creating a confrontation between the 2D representations of beauty and our 3D realities. The entire floor felt like an exploration of body dysmorphia—how beauty ideals distort self-image but can also be reclaimed.
The vibrant colors, the rainbows, and the playfulness didn’t feel naïve—they felt intentional, like a statement of self-love in a world that often tells us we’re not enough. This floor wasn’t just about beauty; it was about taking back the narrative of how we see ourselves.
By the time I reached the rooftop garden, I was emotionally overwhelmed. Tercerunquinto had grounded me in destruction and survival; Martínez’s mourning had unearthed resilience, and Circe Irasema had lifted me in a celebration of self-reflection and vibrant expression. As I sat there, letting the cool air wash over me and the smell of fresh paint linger, I realized the power in what I’d witnessed: art is memory, but it’s also survival. It’s not static—it breathes and transforms across generations, carrying healing in its wake.
Then, I opened up the cute art guide I had been given when I entered right to the map in the back. Mexico City—my current home, this chaotic, vibrant place I love deeply—sat alongside global powerhouses like Milan, Paris, and Miami. It wasn’t just a location pin on a map; it was a statement that Mexico City carved its place among the world’s artistic epicenters, on its own terms.
That’s when the tears came again, not just for the pain of the stories I’d just experienced but for what that map symbolized. It could be read as a history of conquest, of European colonizers claiming everything as their own. But for me, sitting there, it felt like the opposite: an acknowledgment that these stories of survival, creativity, and resilience are no longer pushed aside. They’ve fought their way onto the world stage—not by asking for permission but by existing and thriving despite centuries of violent erasure. Mexico City’s artistic scene isn’t mimicking or seeking approval—it’s asserting its truth and loudly.
As a woman of European descent with ancestral fragments from North America, I couldn’t ignore my role in this post-colonial narrative. But this wasn’t about any personal feelings of guilt - my family comes from poverty and we have endured our fair share of struggles which is why art like this pulls such an emotional response from me. Thats when it hit me - this map was a reflection of survival. And if art is a way to carry pain across generations, then it’s also a way to carry this survival. By holding space for these stories, by walking through this exhibition and crying on a rooftop, I felt that even as privilege shifts and post-colonial dynamics evolve, what we’re really creating is space—space for stories long silenced no matter the background, for art that heals deep collective wounds, for futures shaped by collaboration instead of domination.
Art isn’t just a record of the past—it’s a declaration of the here and now and holds the hopes and dreams of what comes next. And right now, in Mexico City, it’s creating a future that embraces both memory and transformation. Art, like survival, can be gentle or fierce, soothing or confrontational. And as I sat there, the convergence of everything I’d seen—the destruction and rebuilding, the mourning and victory, the personal and collective—reminded me that this is exactly how change and growth happens on all levels. The process is slow, but surely through healing space open up. And in this space Proyectos Monclova said with this curation: this time, we're rebuilding stronger and making room for everyone.
Empress Trash
