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Digging Through the Recent Past

City Photographed Before

A City Photographed Before It Disappears

Memoria y relato. Fotografía en Puebla looks at photographs made in Puebla from the mid-nineteenth century through the 1940s, drawing from public and private collections and including professional photographers, amateurs, visitors and anonymous makers. Museo Amparo deliberately avoids presenting a complete history of photography. Instead, the exhibition follows smaller visual stories through which ideas of the city and its inhabitants were constructed. That approach becomes even more interesting because the museum has invited people in 2026 to add contemporary photographs of Puebla to a “living archive.” Historical photographs can easily acquire an authority they never possessed when they were made. They seem to tell us what a place was. But every photograph is also a choice about what deserved to enter the frame. Placing old images beside contemporary contributions reminds us that a city is never finished being photographed, and its visual history is never complete.

https://museoamparo.com/exhibitions/pieces/313/memory-and-tale-photography-in-puebla

#Photography #Puebla #MexicanPhotography #VisualHistory

A City Photographed Before It Disappears A City Photographed Before It Disappears museoamparo.com Memoria y relato. Fotografía en Puebla | Exposiciones | exposiciones actuales | Museo Amparo, Puebla Organizada en el marco del 35 aniversario del Museo Amparo, esta exposición indaga en el vasto universo de fotografías producidas en Puebla desde me ...
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Abstract Art

Painting for a Temple That Never Existed

Hilma af Klint began The Paintings for the Temple in 1906, creating a vast cycle of works filled with spirals, circles, botanical forms, letters and vivid colour long before abstraction became established in European modernism. The current Grand Palais exhibition in Paris brings this cycle to France for the first time, including the monumental The Ten Largest. What interests me is that these paintings were not originally conceived for the art world as we know it. Af Klint imagined them for a spiritual temple that was never built, while her public career remained largely figurative. She also stipulated that much of this work should not be shown until years after her death. That changes how I look at the paintings. They were not attempts to anticipate an art movement or win a place in modernist history. Geometry, colour, science and spiritualism became tools for trying to picture something she believed existed beyond ordinary sight.

https://www.grandpalais.fr/en/program/hilma-af-klint-paintings-temple-1906-1915

#HilmaAfKlint #AbstractArt #ModernArt #ParisArt

Painting for a Temple That Never Existed Painting for a Temple That Never Existed Grand Palais Hilma af Klint, paintings for the Temple (1906-1915) Her work upended the chronology of modern art. For the first time in France, discover the visionary world of Hilma af Klint (1862?1944), a pioneer of abstraction long kept in the shadows. From her large-scale compositions to her secret avant-garde works, her art blends color, form, and symbolism with captivating audacity.
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Auckland Art

Machines Performing Belief

Twenty-one years after representing New Zealand at the Venice Biennale, et al.’s the fundamental practice is being shown in its entirety in Aotearoa for the first time. Five moving autonomous systems, computer-generated voices and sound form what feels like a dystopian orchestra. What interests me is how easily machines can borrow the language of authority. A synthetic voice does not need to understand an idea to repeat it convincingly. The work turns technology into a strange theatre of belief, obedience and doubt.

https://www.aucklandartgallery.com/connect/news-and-media/new-zealands-2005-venice-biennale-presentation-to-be-shown-in-aotearoa-for-the-first-time

#NewZealandArt #MediaArt #InstallationArt #AucklandArt

Machines Performing Belief Machines Performing Belief Auckland Art Gallery Toi o T?maki New Zealand’s 2005 Venice Biennale presentation to be shown in Aotearoa for the first time | Auckland Art Gallery Toi o T?maki New Zealand’s 2005 Venice Biennale presentation to be shown in Aotearoa for the first time.
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Fabienne Hess

The People Behind the Museum

Fabienne Hess’s Lo invisible y sus tramas at Museo Amparo turns attention toward museum staff whose work normally disappears behind the exhibition. Images printed on silk move through the space while rarely shown collection pieces sit beside familiar works. I like this reversal of attention. Museums teach us what to look at, but they can also make the labour supporting that act of looking almost invisible. An exhibition does not simply appear on a wall. It is built from hundreds of decisions, gestures and forms of care that usually remain outside the frame.

https://museoamparo.com/exposiciones/piezas/315/lo-invisible-y-sus-tramas

#FabienneHess #MuseoAmparo #MexicanArtScene #InstallationArt

The People Behind the Museum The People Behind the Museum museoamparo.com Fabienne Hess. Lo invisible y sus tramas | Exposiciones | exposiciones actuales | Museo Amparo, Puebla El trabajo del personal del Museo Amparo, que habitualmente es invisible en las galerías, ahora está en los muros. Las jerarquías se alteran: obras ...
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Colombian Art

Walking on Melted Weapons

Doris Salcedo’s Fragmentos turns weapons surrendered by the FARC into a metal floor created with the participation of women who experienced sexual violence during Colombia’s conflict. Instead of building another heroic monument above us, Salcedo places history beneath our feet. I find that reversal powerful. A monument usually asks us to look up. This one changes the ground we stand on.

https://www.museonacional.gov.co/noticias/Paginas/Fragmentos.aspx

#DorisSalcedo #ColombianArt #PublicArt #Memory

Walking on Melted Weapons Walking on Melted Weapons Doris Salcedo’s Fragmentos turns weapons surrendered by the FARC into a metal floor created with the participation of women who experienced sexual violence…
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Art History

Digging Through the Recent Past

Before the Eclipse looks back at art made in Mexico between 1981 and 1991 through archaeology, ecology, popular culture and the country’s move toward globalisation. I like the use of archaeology as a metaphor for such a recent period. We normally dig through centuries. Here only a few decades are enough to reveal that ideas about national identity can become historical layers surprisingly quickly.

https://www.museotamayo.org/en/exposiciones/ante-el-eclipse-arqueologias-del-arte-en-mexico

#MexicanArt #MuseoTamayo #ContemporaryArt #ArtHistory

Digging Through the Recent Past Digging Through the Recent Past museotamayo.org Before the Eclipse Jun 10, 2026 - Oct 18, 2026
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Animation

Drawing That Remembers Erasure

William Kentridge repeatedly draws, erases and redraws charcoal images to make his animations. The previous state never vanishes completely. Smudges remain inside the next frame. That makes movement carry its own history. In a practice concerned with apartheid, colonialism and memory, the technique feels inseparable from the subject. The page remembers what has been removed, even when the image tries to move on.

William Kentridge

#WilliamKentridge #Drawing #Animation #SouthAfricanArt

Drawing That Remembers Erasure Drawing That Remembers Erasure Zeitz MOCAA William Kentridge - Zeitz MOCAA The major exhibition, Why Should I Hesitate: Putting Drawings to Work by William Kentridge opens at Zeitz MOCAA in August 2019.
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