Next week, on Tuesday, 19 March, the first major Brno exhibition of the Mexican artist Jimena Mendoza, Cuerpo V (“Body V”) will be unveiled at the House of the Lords of Kunštát. Mendoza has created a brand new installation for Brno, tailored to the exhibition space, based on ancient and non-European cultures, specifically their traditional clothing and earthware products. The exhibition will continue until 2 June.
Mendoza is a Mexican artist based in Prague. Her work is inspired not only by the culture of her native Mexico, but also by other non-European and ancient cultures. The exhibition will have its official unveiling in the House of the Lords of Kunštát on Tuesday, 19 March at 6pm. The new media art centre Vašulka Kitchen Brno, located in the same building, will also present a new exhibition project on the same date – the Permutation installation by the Icelandic artist Sigrun Hardarðottír. Part of the opening will be a musical set by the Finnish producer Shakali, which will start at 6:45pm. Both exhibitions will be open to the public until 2 June 2024.
Mendoza works with various materials and media, including drawing and collage, ceramics, cast glass and painting on canvas, in which the areas of applied and free art are freely intermingled with cultural references. The boundaries of the chosen media are crossed to create spatial, site-specific sculptural installations, in which individual parts, objects and material properties combine to form a complex visual and symbolic space.
An important source of inspiration for the Cuerpo V exhibition is traditional costumes. Garments that have fallen into oblivion over the centuries and are currently worn by only a small percentage of people on a daily basis are perceived by Mendoza from the perspective of post-colonial thinking as a way of expressing cultural resistance to the globalised capitalist world. The cut, layering, combination of colours, patterns and ornaments of clothes create a microcosm of cultural and symbolic meanings that are closely connected to human experience and the body.
Mendoza further uses the wide range of motifs, shapes and technological procedures used in the production of these garments as a basis for creating her own visual vocabulary. The gallery rooms of the House of Kunštát figuratively become a body wearing costumes full of associative meanings and relationships, in which the viewer progresses from the whole to the detail, from the outside to the inside, from the abstract to the concrete.
The accompanying program to the exhibition will offer guided tours with the author and curator Marika Svobodová, as well as themed workshops focused on working with clay and embroidery. You can find more detailed information about the program on the website www.dum-umeni.cz, and on the social networks of the House of Arts.
