A locksmith shop, a home-style eatery, and a café are the neighbors of the new art gallery Campeche. This intimate space —and public at the same time due to its large storefront window— is located on the ground floor of an Art Deco building, just steps from Mercado Medellín, on one of the most vibrant streets in Roma Sur, from which it takes its name.
Bringing together the work of women artists, the new space in Roma Sur, Campeche Gallery, inaugurates with a group exhibition.
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The essence of Galería Campeche is contemporary, young, and above all, inclusive. It opened in early July 2021 with the group exhibition La Luz Proviene de Ahí, bringing together six artists: Alicia Ayanegui, Julieta Gil, Darinka Lamas, Berenice Olmedo, Astrid Terrazas, and Paloma Rosenzweig. The inaugural exhibition set the tone for the gallery’s future programming, according to Fátima González, cofounder alongside Alejandro Jassan, who stated: “the future is female, the future is queer, and above all, it is inclusive.”
The pieces address themes such as activism, power structures, inherited histories, memory, identity, and health. Paloma Rosenzweig (Mexico City, 1992) participates with works that question “the intimacy of the body in relation to disability… while at the same time revealing the flaws in the infrastructure of both public and private healthcare systems.”
At Galería Campeche, a sculpture of two human vertebrae in gray felt reflects on the structure that supports our body. The piece is the result of months of creative work by Paloma and is now on view in Roma Sur; from the initial research and the search for the appropriate material, to the formation of the wire armature and the hand-felting process.
There are no loose ends: the vertebrae are made in gray wool because she wanted to use a natural color, and the fabric adds another layer of meaning to the work for Paloma, since “wool survives the animal, just as knowledge survives the people who created it.”
Paloma’s obsession with medicine originates in her own experience. As a child, she was diagnosed with strabismus, a condition that forced her into constant contact with doctors and led her to question her body in relation to remedies and treatments. Seeing the world from a different vantage point gave her another perspective; she found in art a means to explore everything that intrigued her and a way to interpret it.
She chose her career almost by process of elimination: she couldn’t read long texts, struggled to concentrate, or remain still in one place. During a visit to the Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC), she encountered the work of artist Regina José Galindo, and that meeting led her to pursue art. She studied at the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado (ENPEG), better known as La Esmeralda, in 2015, where she began to shape her discourse: medicine, philosophy, Mexican religious mysticism, comics, and science fiction books.
Her years at university brought her closer to various formats, and the exploration of materials also became central to her creative process: ceramics, silicone, fabric, hair, and thread—elements that allow her to bring her research into reality, or as she calls them, “visual essays.”
The works exhibited at Campeche are part of Paloma’s most recent project, No Hacer Daño (“Do No Harm”), “a visual essay on medicine and its ideology.” She has just returned from the United States after completing her master’s degree at Parsons School of Design, and her artistic practice—which stems from a personal place—has become part of a broader global discourse, due to the current relevance of scientific opinion in the context of the pandemic.
Like Paloma, the other five artists participating in the exhibition at Galería Campeche in Roma Sur are young women exploring their current possibilities within society, their relationship to patriarchal structures, and their position as part of a field that is in constant self-questioning.
Campeche, as an art gallery, joins this exploration by offering—amid one of the most popular areas of Roma Sur—a meeting point for discussion, expression, and creativity.
The exhibition La Luz Proviene de Ahí will be on view at Campeche through September 4.
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August 25, 2021
