Yope Projects, a collective of six artists from Oaxaca, operates as a dynamic physical/virtual platform dedicated to promoting, producing, and showcasing contemporary art in Oaxaca de Juárez. Established in mid-2017, the collective, comprising Gibran Mendoza, Andy Medina, Jou Morales, David Zafra, Vidal Martínez, and Kasser Sánchez, draws inspiration from the internet, television, and music of the 90s and 2000s era. While leveraging social media to exhibit their art globally, they choose to remain rooted in Oaxaca, eschewing migration to larger cities.
In Oaxaca, "Yope" carries both derogatory and resilient connotations, depicting individuals as darker-skinned and ill-mannered yet resilient and hardworking. Their reclamation of the word Yope operates as a form of empowerment. Acknowledging the dark past of its initial intentions into using it as a form of resilience and growth.
This millennial art collective epitomizes a vibrant fusion of tradition and innovation, seamlessly blending childhood memories and pop culture imagery with contemporary artistic expression. Embracing technology, they draw inspiration from arcade games and Japanese culture and cars, employing DIY experimentation and envisioning a future where technology and tradition coalesce. Their artwork, informed by Oaxacan rituals and the Zapotec language, fosters community engagement through workshops while sourcing materials locally to add cultural depth and identity.
With 3D scans transformed into paintings, they explore the transformative journey of creation and the intrinsic value of dirt, generating culturally rich imagery through appropriation and experimentation. As they carve out a unique space in the Mexican and global contemporary art world, Yope Projects emerges as a beacon of post-internet creativity.
“The Meaning Is The End” a solo exhibition by Jaime Muñoz. In this exhibition Muñoz explores the continuation of a series of diagram drawings, reminiscent of automotive repair manuals, to delve into concepts surrounding commodity, and consumerism. Within these works, Muñoz navigates concepts surrounding the intertwining of belief systems, such as religion and capitalism, and critique how they are used interchangeably, with historical parallels drawn between the church's role in commodifying the spirit and the capitalist structure role in commodifying the body. Muñoz examines the backfiring effects of Modernity, highlighting the current conditions of the world.
The exhibition surrounds itself around the formal and conceptual parallelisms in Wolfryd and Lorusso’s practices. Both artists employ the metaphor of the mirror and reflection to delve into intricate themes within their respective practices. Lorusso utilizes this idea both as a physical object and a symbolic surface. In parallel, Wolfryd integrates it as a metaphor within the broader
Michele Lorusso (Puerto Vallarta, México, 1994) is a visual artist who uses primarily poetry, installation, performance and sculpture to explore, both materially and discursively, the mirror and its reflection as a surface for inscription of the symbolic. With an interest in illusion, the passage of time, duality, fragmented identity and relational aesthetics, her artistic practice is characterized by working with the poetic and cathartic potential of spoken language and writing in collective contexts of self-reflection and confrontation. Affective where the agency of the public is key.
Marek Wolfryd (Mexico City, 1989) is a multidisciplinary artist that explores the intersection of artistic and economic narratives in the context of culture, history, and society. Through a wide range of media, such as process art, readymades, sculpture, installations, video, and performance, Wolfryd reviews cultural movements and their aesthetic discourses, generally delving into micro-historical phenomena surrounding these great chronicles. Through long-term research projects, Wolfryd builds a conceptual framework that exposes the complexity of certain narratives that exist both within and outside the spheres of symbolic influence of the Western world. His works reflect and explore the means of mass production, consumer culture, copyright, authorship, and the mechanisms of art creation and distribution.