Pia Camil: Telón de Boca | Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City

August 11 – December 9, 2018

Pia Camil
Telón de Boca

Curated by Itzel Vargas Plata

Pia Camil's first institutional solo exhibition in Mexico, Telón de Boca places her story at tianguis cultural del Chopo, a street market in Mexico City. From the same genealogy as recent projects Fade into Black, SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA (2018); Bara, Bara, Bara, Dallas Contemporary, Dallas, TX (2017); and Divisor Pirata, Nuevo Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Guatemala City, Guatemala (2016); Telón de Boca utilizes T-shirts as vessels for cultural, social, and commercial information.

Telón de Boca is comprised of garments produced in Latin America, sold to retailers in the United States, later discarded and sold as bales in Mexico. Camil acquires these secondhand band T-shirts from the street market, then perpetuates the barter, exchanging with friends, visitors of the tianguis and the museum. These garments come to constitute the textile sculpture that is accompanied by field recordings of the tianguis, music that carries the ritual and communal heritage of this long-established meeting place. The work is later activated by the public as a stage for events related to the museum's live arts program. Here Camil creates an environment for reflections on other possibilities of economic relations, swap systems, consumerism, geographical transits systems, and the circulation of goods.