This winter, art from the Mexican diaspora takes the throne at The Modern in Fort Worth. Inside the serene Tadao Ando designed building sits beautiful and surprisingly political pieces (for Fort Worth) speaking to racial tensions at soccer games, police brutality, sexualized violence in Juarez, and more. The first of its kind of North Texas, this exhibit explores themes in Mexican art since the 90s.

Here’s a couple of my favorite pieces:

Volcán – Damián Ortega, 2013: Bits of volcanic rocks dangling from the ceiling to contour a 3-dimensional spiraling hourglass shape that took up an entire room. Standing underneath the installation in the eye of the hourglass is an experience.

Vulnerabilia 2008-2010 – Jonathan Hernández: Two frames of newspaper clippings. One filled with clippings of diplomatic agreements or handshakes amongst notable people, and the other filled with photos of casualties. This piece presumably brings to light the realities often euphemized in diplomacy.

One piece from Vulnerabilia 2008-2010 by Jonathan Hernández

Untitled (Portrait of 450 Murdered Women in Ciudad Juárez), 2009 Artemiò: This piece consisted as a gigantic mound of dirt from the Juarez desert equivalent to the average weight of the 450 murdered women in the Juarez desert. The rape and death of women who travel to work in Maquiladoras in the Juarez area is no joke. It was great to observe people catch sight of the mound of dirt, make fun of it, then go read the title to potentially be exposed to something they didn’t know about.

Untitled (Portrait of 450 Murdered Women in Ciudad Juárez), 2009 by Artemiò

In an adjacent room, the same artist also used Chanel Lipstick to write a message on the wall next to a metal YSL sign that reads Yo Soy Libertario! (The dot on the eye being an Anarchy symbol, of course.)

Yo Soy Libertario! by Artemio

PM 2010 by Teresa Margolles, 2012: A wall covered in Margolles’ collection of newspaper covers from the tabloid PM in Ciudad, Juarez. All 313 or so tabloid covers from the year 2010 (the most violent year for the drug war in Mexican history) have one thing in common- headlines of drug war deaths adorned by pinup ads. The repetition of this combination day after day for 313 consecutive issues really nails down the dominant narrative in Juarez that reveals worth of men and women in the drug game.

Detail shot of PM 2010 by Teresa Margolles

Other notable pieces included satirical billboard ads for eternal life through social networking by José Jiménez Ortiz, brightly colored plates and dishes strung together and hung like party tinsel and library bookshelves of colored brooms evoking spirit in objects of domestic and janitorial labor by Thomas Glassford, a reenactment of the Guatemalan civil war by day laborers in a Home Depot parking lot by Yoshua Okón, and much much more. Needless to say, the art presented by these artists was amazingly creative and talented. I appreciate art as a potentially educational and activist medium for the visually inclined. These artists rocked the museum. I hope The Modern keeps up the melanin, its a good look!