MEXA!

by Paloma Ayala and Adriana Domínguez

MEXA! Collection

MEXA! is a collection of independent publications from Mexico which was commissioned by VOLUMES in 2017. Since then, the collection has been activated on different occasions, and has increasingly become a project focused on feminist content.

During the summer of 2020, MEXA! launched a collaborative website in order to collect feminist hashtags from around the world, and to share information about them. Additionally, it created a collection of hashtags for pandemic times, which were invented by the visitors of the website. 

The materials on this website are the latest activation of the MEXA! Collection. Using the hashtags for pandemic times  -which revolve around topics of feminism, eco-feminism, care-work and community- as a filter to review the collection, a selection of around 20 publications was made. Extracts of each publication have been chosen and gathered in clusters in order to address each specific topic. 

All the publications can be consulted at the VOLUMES archive. 

#Pandemic Hashtags and MEXA! Collection:
How the activation works

Hashtags under each cluster are color coded according to the information they contain:

#green - Title of publication part of MEXA! Archive
#dark green - a description of the publication 
#red - artist, author, editor, curator
#dark red - a description of red, titles of projects done by #red
#purple - #Hashtag for Pandemic Times
#brown- #Hashtag MEXA! Female Takeover
##pink - Double hashtag, an activist BOMB!
blue - hyper-link

<img source: “ “> - image quote 

<division box> - Title of cluster
<div page> - One <division box> can be divided in <div pages>

MEXA was founded by Adriana Domínguez and Paloma Ayala.

Adriana Domínguezis an Art Historian and Independent Curator from Mexico, currently living and working in Zurich. She is co-founder and co-curator of la_cápsula, a curatorial platform and independent art space in Zurich that seeks to create a dialogue between the artistic and cultural production of Latin America and the Swiss/local scene. Since 2017 she has collaborated with artist Paloma Ayala to create and activate MEXA!, an archive of independent publications from Mexico, which is part of the VOLUMES Archive. Adriana graduated from Art History from Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City and did a MAS in Curating at ZHdK. She worked as Assistant Curator for Museo Tamayo in Mexico City, and has curated exhibitions in art spaces nad commercial galleries both in Mexico and Switzerland, including Kunstraum Walchetur, Helmhaus (as part of VOLUMES Zurich), Galerie Peter Kilchmann and Knoerle & Baettig Contemporary, She currently works for art galleries Grieder Contemporary and Galerie Wenger.
la_cápsula

Paloma Ayala (b. 1980, Matamoros, Mexico) is a visual artist interested in empowering the relationship between domestic living strategies and political contexts. She is a diaspora mother and a mestiza daughter whose work fictionalizes historical, ecological or social problematics as means of analysis and critique. Paloma's projects nourish visions of connection between human and more than human spheres, they dream of emancipation from marginalizing dominant structures, and emphasize practices of care. Her favorite spaces to work range from kitchen to river shore, from international bridge to cropland, from community meeting to aquelarre.
Her art production takes the form of publications, videos, reading or cooking sessions and installations directed to different public, including human outside of cultural institutions.
Paloma's work is rooted in her home, the eastern US/MX border landscapes, simultaneously blooming in her current base in Zurich. She has a Bachelor in Fine Arts (Universidad de Monterrey, 2002), a Teaching Degree (Arte AC. 2003) and a Master in Fine Arts (ZHdK, 2017). She collaborates with Adriana Domínguez and VOLUMES since 2017.
Paloma Ayala