30.07.2016 - 20.08.2016

deutsche version hier!

nuestro barrio

a collaboration of Somosmexas, Feral, not your soap and neurotitan

opening on the 30th of July at 7pm

find the program here

Nuestro Bairro is an exchange project between the independent art scenes in Mexico City and Berlin. An artistic collaboration and mutual engagement in order to share ideas, knowledge and experiences, to expand the understanding and identify new opportunities for action and empowerment of the independent scene. Furthermore it seeks to figure out the role of autonomous art projects and spaces in relation to their communities, their tactics of resistance against neoliberal urban development, as well as ways to stimulate greater commitment with the issues of the neighborhoods they are placed in.

Divided into two phases the project first invites the art collective and independent art space Feral, based in Mexico City, for a residency at the art exhibition association neurotitan in Berlin. For a period of four weeks the guests will get a deep insight into the Berlin independent scene through discussions and project visits, while they themselves will participate at the site exhibition, give workshops and hold topic-oriented lectures.

o.T., (c) Mariana Magdaleno

In the second phase the Berlin based participants will travel to Mexico City, where the knowledge acquired during the first phase will be compared, analyzed, reflected upon, discussed and structured on the basis of the situation on-site. As closure a common thematic mural should arise, addressing to the Mexican tradition of Muralista and sharing the common understanding of the participants about urban expression.

more information on www.nuestrobarrio.de

Aliento, (c) Jorge Rosano Gamboa

SOMOSMEXAS

Somosmexas is a multidisciplinary collective founded in 2007. The base of the collective is ATEA, an independent, multidisciplinary and collaborative artspace founded in a former factory. ATEA develops and hosts diverse projects, such as art exhibitions, research projects and projects led by experiment and production, inspired by the people working in the area of La Merced - a historical trade neighborhood in Mexico City’s Downtown.

The impulse of Somosmexas work is the direct action. Art, architecture, public space, cultural management, research and documentation are the topics the collective deals with. In 2013 the collective were invited to participate in the 5th Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture in Shenzhen China, where they presented Space Border/Time Border, a critical work about urban borders in Mèxico city. Somosmexas have been invited to give workshops and lectures at several universities and institutions inside and outside Mèxico. Somosmexas is an open structure that promotes and generates new dialogues between art, architecture and territory.

Dolmen II, (c) Christian Castañeda

FERAL

is a collective and former art space for production, cooperation and exhibition. The collective has recently lost it's space due to current city development processes. FERAL takes drawing as a focal point and uses it to trigger projects, generating and containing them around all of its possibilities, not only the boundaries of what can be validated as “art”.

As a collective FERAL has found that in Mexico and other countries independent spaces work like a radar for the emerging scene and connect artists, society and the context itself. Particularly in Mexico, independent spaces are the result of a need because there is a lack of opportunity for artists to produce, show and spread their work. In the consequence there is no real and strong link between artists. Due to the displacement of FERALS former gallery/studio and the goals of the collective, FERAL is interested in addressing topics of their daily life: gentrification; the creation of projects that affect the geography we live in; linking the community; building networks from a physical (art)space; and the reflection of how complex a city like the one we live in can be and how this impacts their inhabitants.

In the project "Nuestro Barrio" following participants of FERAL take part:

CHRISTIAN CASTAñEDA

Through her research in the fields of magic, the occult, fear, death, loneliness, abandonment, fragility and alternate realities, Christian moves around the boundaries between other and possible worlds, with the use of drawing as a tool of alchemy, focusing on myth, abstraction and the sacred-symbolic reality.

JORGE ROSANO GAMBOA

His work revolves around subjects like death, memory, identity and their symbolic meaning. His artistic production relies mostly on drawing and photography.

JOSÉ ROBERTO FLORES GARCÍA

He is an artist and illustrator that lives and works in Mexico City, with a passion for drawing, the aesthetics of the grotesque, trash pop culture, garage rock, B movies, vinyl album covers and chilaquiles.

(c) Roberto Flores

MARIANA MAGDALENO

The discovery of identity, the ability to be created from the imagination, magic, spirituality behind nature, symbolism of animals and its mimesis with humans, as well as the search for the hybridization between good and evil are recurring themes in Magdaleno’s work.

The art director team

JESÚS LÓPEZ

In early 2010, while living in the U.S. Jesús López got involved with the independent art scene in Chicago, with a group of activists working on collaborative projects engaged with the local community from their neighbourhoods. Back in Mexico City, he founded Somosmexas a collective formed by 5 architects and in 2011 the collective created ATEA a multidisciplinary and collaborative interdisciplinary platform and artspace for diverse experimentation and production.
Since 2011, Jesus has been working as an architect, developing urban recycling projects, building collective housing and designing public space. His work as an Artisan dwells on designing and building bicycles. As an artist Jesus has developed interventions in public spaces, strategies to enhance sustainable mobility.

ANNIKA HIRSEKORN

works as a freelancer at Haus Schwarzenberg / neurotitan gallery and develops , curates and produces exhibitions and international art projects . In addition to her involvement in the independent art scene in Berlin , which she feels connected to for more than 10 years and which she actively supports as a collective member of several groups , she is interested in the artistic approach to the politics of memory and political monuments in the public space .

realized with the support of