Participating Artists
Get to know the profile of the 10 national and international artists who participated with their works in the exhibition Markets from contemporary art.
Alejandro Gómez Arias (Ciudad de México, México, 1985)
Mr. Gómez Arias has a master's degree in visual arts from the National Autonomous University of Mexico and has completed studies in political economics at the Autonomous University of Mexico City. His work focuses on the relationship between art and economic practices, examining concepts linked to markets, the exploitation of natural resources, virtual assets, and capitalism. It spans various media and disciplines, such as painting, sculpture, video and art installations.
He has been the recipient of the PAC 2019 scholarship for publications from the Board of Contemporary Art; in 2013 and 2016, he obtained the Grant for Young Artists from the National Fund for Culture and the Arts; and in 2008, the National Young Art Award.
Alicia Herrero (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1954)
Ms. Herrero studied at the Prilidiano Pueyrredón National School of Fine Arts. Since the end of the 1990s, her work has investigated the relationship between economics, art, and society, emphasizing unequal wealth distribution, colonial plundering, and the development of technology. Through her work, she seeks to examine problematic aspects of macroeconomics which directly affect our environment.
Among the awards she has received are the 2022 Konex Award; the 2021 National Artistic Career Award, the 2019 Fortabat Foundation Award; and the Bicentennial Grant for Creation from the National Arts Fund, in 2016. Her work forms part of public collections in the Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Latin American Art, both located in Buenos Aires.
Antonio Isaac (Mexico City, Mexico, 1973)
An interdisciplinary artist, Mr. Gómez has completed studies in quantum geometry, neuroaesthetics, philosophy, cinema, and music. He makes use of his specialized knowledge in the production of this work, the aim of which is to foment sensibility to the value of the natural environment we inhabit. The relationship between art and science is the key axis of his work. He compiles data from memories, sounds, and natural processes, and codifies them in a virtual reality through the use of new technologies.
In 2013 he was nominated by the magazine QUO, owned by Mexico's Grupo Expansión, and the Discovery Networks channel, as a Quo+Discovery Knowledge of Minds Ambassador, an award granted to Mexicans who develop projects that link art and science.
Cecilia Barreto (Mexico City, Mexico, 1985)
Ms. Barreto has a master's degree in visual arts from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. In addition, she has attended many artistic residencies in Mexico and Canada. The thematic axes around which her artistic work revolves are the areas of political, economic, and international finance. She has researched these areas in depth for more than ten years, during which she has taken information generated by large financial news agencies and various news media, giving it a new meaning in pieces that narrate the connection between economic systems and current day-to-day life.
Important national and international biennials have selected and presented her work, such as the XIV Biennial in Havana, 2021-2022 and the XVI Rufino Tamayo Painting Biennial in 2014.
Eduardo Abaroa (Mexico City, Mexico, 1968)
Mr. Abaroa has a master's degree in fine arts from the California Institute of the Arts in the United States. His artistic work centers on sculpture and installation; in it he takes apart the concepts of monumentality and modernity, seeking to call attention to societal, economic and environmental damage caused by excessive exploitation of natural resources.
He has received the Sculpture Prize from the International Society of Mexican Art Values, in 2006; a grant from the National System of Creators of Art from the National Fund for Culture and the Arts, in 2004; and the Fulbright-García Robles scholarship, in 2004.
Elisa Insua (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1990)
Ms. Insua holds a B.A in business economics from the Torcuato Di Tella University. Her work is distinguished by its use of disused materials, which are put together and agglomerated in large quantities in order to address the subjects of the economic system, irresponsible consumption, inequality, and the degradation of the environment. At the same time, her visual language is inspired by the bling aesthetic of U.S. rap, baroque-style churches, the kawaii Japanese culture, carnival costumes, and the saturated colors of advertising aesthetics
In 2018, she was awarded the National Foundation of the Arts Prize, and in 2020, she was on the list of finalists for the MACSur Prize for Visual Arts.
Federico Martínez Montoya (Mexico City, Mexico, 1984)
Mr. Martínez Montoya studied graphic communication design at the Autonomous Metropolitan University, and he holds a master's degree in visual arts from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. His artistic work explores economic systems and their relation to daily urban life. He often questions today's various forms of work, the official history of spaces, and the value of banknotes and coins.
He has participated in important collective expositions such as: TIANGUIS: OTR+S, TOD+S, NOSOTR+S, Alameda Art Laboratory (2021) and #freelancer. Arquitecturas de la fatiga, Galería Breve (2018). He currently does work for the Invisible Foundry Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art Ecatepec.
Joseph Heathcott (Indiana, United States, 1968)
Mr. Heathcott is an urbanist, researcher, and professor in the Global Urban and Environmental Studies program at The New School. The subjects he researches and teaches include: real and imaginary cities; architectural history; urban planning; and cities as living archives of creativity. He defines his work as a critical exercise, in which he seeks to intervene and reflect on the spaces and experiences of cities, through photography and various visual media.
During his career, he has been awarded grants from the Gerda Henkel Foundation, the American Council of Scientific Societies, the Mellon Foundation, The Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative, the Brown Center for the Humanities and the Zolberg Institute for Migration Studies.
Máximo González (Paraná, Argentina, 1971)
Mr. González studied visual arts at the Josefina Contte Higher Institute of Fine Arts and Languages. His work approaches reuse as a way to lay a claim to objects in disuse in order to transform them into works that question the value of materials, official narratives, economic exchange, and the art market.
In 2019 and 2016 he was a member of the Selection Committee of the National Fund for Culture and the Arts. His artistic work won recognition from the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development in 2015, for his project Changarrito, and it won the 2014 ArtPrize, for his installation Tengo Hambre.
Melanie Smith (Poole, England, 1965)
Ms. Smith studied fine arts at Reading University. Her work is characterized by a reading of the economics of markets with an ethnographic focus. To this is added the constant problem of the effects and waste of industrialization, the impact of the capitalist system, urbanization and globalization, as shown in an aesthetic which is expressed through photography, cinema, performance art and installation.
In a career that spans three decades, she has participated in numerous collective and individual expositions throughout the world. In 2011 she represented the Mexican Pavilion in the LIV Venice Biennial. Her work may be found in various art collections, distributed among more than thirty museums and foundations in Mexico and abroad.
* Credits, from left to right:
Cecilia Barreto Aguilar, Is never enough 25, 2016, Saenger Gallery collection.
Cecilia Barreto Aguilar, Untitled, 2017. Alterna Gallery, Cherem Zaga family collection.
Alejandro Gómez Arias, Golden Calf (Purple), 2021, from the artist's private collection.