For Mexico, which prides itself on a unique artistic tradition, the crisis resulting from the global economic meltdown and swine flu is particularly acute, and is being felt by the country’s artistic community and museums.

See this report by for more.

– Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Image: A model of a jaguar is part of a public art installation on Mexico City’s Avenida de la Reforma. Deborah Bonello / Los Angeles Times.

Anyone with even a passing interest in Latin American art and culture will have heard of Diego Rivera, the Mexican painter and muralist. Rivera, who is credited with being one of the founders of the Mexican muralist art movement, was also an active communist and the husband of the equally famous Mexican artist, Frida Kahlo.

Between 1922 and 1953, Rivera painted murals in Mexico City, Chapingo and Cuernavaca here in Mexico, as well as in San Francisco, Detroit, and New York City. Mexico City’s Palacio Pacional, or National Palace, is home to some of the paintings that Rivera did under government commission, and those works are currently the focus of a restoration project by the federal government.

Diligent specialists are touching up missing color with watercolor paints, and using a weak alcohol solution to wash away dust and grime that the murals have collected.The restoration program is expected to be completed in September.

See the video for more.

– Deborah Bonello in Mexico City for the Los Angeles Times.

Video: Specialists restore Diego Rivera’s murals in Mexico City’s Palacio Nacional. Credit: Deborah Bonello / Los Angeles Times.

At the time of writing the dispatch, we were also curious to know why owner Eugenio Lopez Alonso, heir to the Jumex juice fortune, opted for a British firm.

In Mexico, the term “malinchismo” is used to refer to the favoritism Mexicans sometimes show towards foreigners over other Mexicans. The term comes from the name given a woman who was adviser and lover to the leader of the Spanish Conquest, Hernan Cortez. The woman, Doña Marina, was called La Malinche by the Aztecs, who labeled her a traitor and harlot for her role as Cortes’s ally as he conquered Mexico, her homeland.

Here is Lopez Alonso’s response, sent via email:

Fue muy difícil decidir quien sería el responsable del diseño para el nuevo espacio; la selección del diseño no se hizo a través de una licitación o concurso.

It was very difficult to decide who would be responsible for designing the new space; the selection of the design wasn’t done through a bidding process or a contest.

Hay muchos arquitectos excelentes en todo el mundo; sin embargo, lo que llamó mi atención y me gustó acerca del Arquitecto David Chipperfield fueron sus proyectos para museos previos.

There are many excellent architects around the world; however, what caught my attention and what I liked about the architect David Chipperfield were his previous museum projects.

Tuve una entrevista con él y me gustó mucho cómo se desarrolló la misma, sabía que él era la persona indicada; siempre me gustó la idea de dejar en México un arquitecto internacional. Nunca consideré a un arquitecto mexicano, por la simple razón de que una ciudad tan importante como la Ciudad de México, merece tener grandes edificios de arquitectos internacionales, como todas las Grandes Ciudades del Mundo: Berlín, Madrid, París, Londres; en éstas ciudades siempre hay notables edificaciones de arquitectos internacionales de gran renombre.

I interviewed him and I liked what he had to say, I knew that he was the right person; I’ve always liked the idea of having an international architect working here in Mexico. I would never consider a Mexican architect, for the simple reason that a city as important as Mexico City deserves to have grand buildings by international architects, like all the big cities in the world: Berlin, Madrid, Paris, London; in these cities there are always noteworthy buildings from renowned international architects.

No es malinchismo, de ninguna manera; pero siempre he creído que la internacionalización de los proyectos puede beneficiar y nutrir la visión de muchos, tanto al país de origen de los proyectos, como aquél que recibe los trabajos del extranjero.

It’s not “malinchismo”, no way; I’ve always believed that the internationalization of projects can benefit and nourish the vision of many people, in the country where the projects originate as well those who receive the works from abroad.

– Deborah Bonello in Mexico City for La Plaza

Karla Lizbeth Zunega Chavez, 20, who uses the identity “Fanzye” for her work, grew up saving her pocket money to spend on aerosol cans.

“I didn’t eat anything at the weekend so I could go and buy a box of cans, or sometimes I’d just buy three because of the cost,” she says.

Now her work, and that of other young Mexican graffiti artists, has been taken off the streets by a family-business partnership and placed in a gallery in downtown Mexico City.

Cave Men Did It First is the first permanent art space in the city dedicated exclusively to graffiti.

See more posts on art and culture here.

La Coleccion Jumex, one of the largest private collections of contemporary art open to the public in Latin America, is planning to move from its location on the outskirts of Mexico City closer to the action in the capital’s center.

A release issued by the Fundacion Jumex confirms the appointment of David Chipperfield Architects, a London-based firm, to design a new building for the collection of more than 1,300 pieces.

The art museum is currently in a 15,000-square-foot white cube of a building on the grounds of the giant Jumex juice plant in the city of Ecatepec. Eugenio Lopez, heir to the Jumex family fortune, began collecting contemporary art years ago, and at one time owned and operated a gallery in Beverly Hills.

Ecatepec, more than a half-hour drive from central Mexico City, is a gritty working-class area. It’s better known as a transit point for migrants hopping trains to the United States than for its vibrant cultural scene.

The new gallery will be in the Granada neighborhood of Mexico City, which is a stone’s throw from the affluent Polanco borough that is home to many of the embassies here in el Distrito Federal (or Federal District), as the capital is officially known.

Construction of the gallery is expected to start in March 2010 and be completed by 2011, in time for the collection’s 10th anniversary.

You can read more about Eugenio Lopez in this profile by the L.A. Times’ Reed Johnson. Lopez is “a steadfast patron of up-and-coming Mexican artists such as Gabriel Orozco and Damian Ortega, helping to shift their careers into high gear,” Johnson writes.

David Chipperfield Architects has designed a number of museums around the world, including the Anchorage Museum in Alaska, the Figge Art Museum in Iowa and the Ansaldo City of Cultures in Milan, Italy.

– Deborah Bonello in Mexico City for La Plaza

Image: Drawings of the new building plans for the Coleccion Jumex, provided by the Jumex Foundation.

Lida is an accomplished author and journalist who has lived in Mexico City for the last 15 years. He has written a number of books, which you can read about here on his website.

David Lida. Photo by Federico Gama

The following is a short chapter about a dollar-a-dance hostess known as a fichera in Mexico City.

Paty
The Villa Rica is a low-lit bar with amber lighting, wood-paneled walls and a jukebox that doesn’t have a single song recorded after 1980. It is an example of what are known as antros de ficheras, and I have never seen them outside of Mexico City.

A fichera is a woman who, despite what is usually a boiler-shaped body, dresses in a short skirt and a snug blouse, and sells her company to a male clientele. Most of a fichera’s clients are after nothing more than her sympathetic presence: a woman he can flirt with who will not rebuff his advances; a woman to whom he can recount the various misadventures and misunderstandings of his life; a woman with whom he can dance to the familiar ballads on the jukebox. Ficheras earn no salary, but are given tips as well as a percentage of the price of the drinks the customers order for them; hence, most have cast-iron constitutions and, as they say in Mexico City, toman como cosacos (drink like Cossacks).

Some ficheras are game for further adventures; if the customer pays an exit fee to the management, she will accompany him to a nearby hotel. Still, most customers prefer companionship; ficheras are closer to geishas than to prostitutes.

Many men like to visit ficheras when they are feeling low. Mexican males, the weight of machismo on their shoulders, are emotionally diffident and cannot express their feelings to the people with whom they are supposedly intimate; a fichera is a convenient receptacle for their sorrows and shames. There is a particular fichera at the Villa Rica named Paty that I like to visit, but not to recount my anguish. Like Sheherazade, Paty has a thousand and one stories, and listening to her invariably makes whatever troubles I may have recede in the rearview mirror.

Paty wears enormous eyelashes and thick makeup, changes her hair color on a regular basis, and flaunts her enormous breasts with low-cut blouses. About five feet tall, she tends to sport nine-inch heels. Her smile is wide, perpetual and, as far as I can tell, genuine. She has been working at the Villa Rica since 1985, her anno horribilus, when not only did the earthquake leave her and her family homeless, but her husband was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (a disease she refers to as “European”). Her salary as a waitress in the coffee shop at Sanborn’s wasn’t enough to sustain them and her two children, so she began her career as a fichera.

One of Paty’s regular clients is an ancient Spaniard who owns the Hotel Toledo down the street where the ficheras take their customers. He only likes to watch – Paty assures me hasn’t had an erection in the 20 years she has known him – so he takes her to swingers’ clubs, where men are not allowed to enter unaccompanied by women.

“But he makes me take off my clothes, and in those places if you’re naked, you have to let anyone do what they want. You can’t say no. Even when you have your clothes on, they still get handsy with you – with their fingers and everything.” She made a face like she had sipped spoiled milk. “Having sex is better because at least they’ve got a condom on. That guy’s fingers …” She uses the Mexican’s universal expletive for disgust: “Guácala. I couldn’t sleep that night.”
Another man, who always dressed in a suit and tie, would take her to a four-star hotel. Before entering, he would buy a bunch of roses on the corner. He would ask Paty to strip and eat the rose petals. “And that was that. He never got naked; he always kept his boxers on. He’d let me have whatever I wanted from the minibar and would pay me more than three times the going rate.”

After losing the 2006 presidential elections, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (who had resigned his post as mayor of Mexico City to launch his campaign) arranged mass demonstrations on Avenida Juárez and Paseo de la Reforma, the two biggest streets near the Villa Rica. Getting around that part of the city became close to impossible, and nearly all the bar’s customers disappeared. Paty, who usually earns about $45 a night, was coming home with less than ten. “The other night a guy came and bought me 40 tequilas,” she said one night while the protests were in full swing. Not knowing when the next time a big spender would arrive, she drank them all. “After all that, I vomited through my nose, but at least I made some money.”

Paty didn’t blame López Obrador for her hard luck. “It’s God’s will,” she said. “In the Bible you’ve got the years of the fat cows and the years of the skinny cows. Right now it’s skinny time. God squeezes us but he doesn’t strangle us.” She put her hand on my thigh. “You want to go to the Señorial steam baths? They remodeled them. You don’t know how beautiful they came out. We can go to a private room. They have cable TV with a porno channel.”

Nicaragua’s culture, arts and music scene is the focus of a new magazine launched by two American designers living in the country’s capital, Managua.

Hecho, which means “done” or “made” in Spanish, is the project of Christopher Sataua, 27, from San Diego and Oliver Best, 31, from Oregon. I caught up with them from Mexico City via Skype video phone to talk about the magazine.

The bimonthly is about to publish its third issue and, despite the weak global media market, has managed to sign up more than 30 local advertisers. Best says that although they expect to see a loss on the first three issues and have so far funded the project themselves, they’re working hard to build Hecho into a vehicle that local advertisers want to be seen in.

Hecho is visually striking, due at least in part to the design background of both owners. The magazine isn’t aimed at travelers but, rather, locals and foreigners living and working in the country who want to know about what’s going on in the underground music, arts and culture scene.

It’s a locally produced, bilingual effort produced by a group of both native and foreign writers and others living in Nicaragua and focusing on a strand of society that both local and international media largely ignore, the owners say.

“I don’t know of anybody writing anything about what’s happening culturally inside the country,” said Sataua.

Their tone is cool, collected and informed, and their print run of 4,000 per issue disappears pretty quickly.

“We went to do a photo shoot in the market, and as we were going through the market, we were throwing the magazine around, and people were like ants, you know, coming to it,” Sataua said.

The online version of Hecho is “still in its infancy,” according to Best, who says he and his partner want to build it out into a much bigger presence. For now, you can download the print version of the magazine from the site, as well as read some of the articles and peruse a blog.

Thanks to Americas Quarterly for alerting us to Hecho. You can read more about the project in their report here.

— Deborah Bonello in Mexico City for La Plaza

Visits to some of Mexico City’s museums have fallen by as much as 90% since the outbreak of the H1N1 virus last month that prompted a near shutdown of numerous facilities, according to reports in the local media.

Owners of some of the privately owned museums in the capital are seeking financial help from the government  and say that if attendance doesn’t pick up, they may be forced to take “drastic measures,” such as cutting staff by half and opening for only three days a week.

Carlos Phillips, owner of the Dolores Olmedo Museum, which houses a collection of paintings by Frida Kahlo and the largest private collection of works by Diego Rivera, told the Notimex news agency that before the H1N1 virus hit Mexico City, visitors to his and other museums had risen over the last 12 months.

But he said that government measures in reaction to the virus, which included shutting schools, museums and cinemas and restricting restaurants to take-out service only, “put various sectors in a precarious situation, among them the cultural sector.”

He referred to museums – such as his own – that don’t receive governmental support and depend on entrance fees for their survival.

Phillips, who is also the owner of the Frida Kahlo Museum and the Diego Rivera Anahuacalli Museum, told Notimex: “We’ve decided to wait for May and June to go by before taking drastic measures like reducing the number of staff we have or only opening our doors for three days a week.”

Last week, La Jornada reported that five of the city’s non-government-owned museums, including the three mentioned above as well as the Soumaya and Franz Mayer museums, were petitioning the government for help and accusing it of ignoring the cultural sector’s needs after the influenza shutdown.

“They treat us like a pending problem,” Alfonso Morales, head of the Soumaya museum, told the newspaper.

“They don’t think of museums as part of the economy, or they regard them as subsidized entities that have other means of existing.”

Both Phillips and Morales want to create an association of non-governmental museums with the aim of improving their access to the media as well as reduce the taxes they’re required to pay.

– Deborah Bonello in Mexico City for La Plaza

Image: Kahlo painted “Self Portrait on the Border Between Mexico and the United States” (1932) while she was in the U.S. with Diego Rivera as he worked on murals. Credit: Jennifer Szymaszek / Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes

Japanese – Mexican American artist Shizu Saldamando was inspired by Mexico City-based writer (and former Los Angeles Times journalist) Daniel Hernandez during a recent trip to this sprawling metropolis.

A photo the artist took of Hernandez and fashion designer Uriel Urban ended up as a painting on the walls of Space 47 as part of the artist’s new show.

Saldamando’s new show in Space 47 in San Jose, Calif., is explained on the gallery website:

“Rather than depicting moments of cultural Diaspora, Shizu Saldamando gravitates towards the idea of fragmentation within the self as being more of a multiplicitous evolving, fluid, whole, and never-ending process. `We are all part of unique subcultures and movements, both physically and psychologically, that are constantly in flux, changing through influences, and morphing in style,’ says Saldamando.”

As Hernandez writes on his blog “Intersections“:

“For this set of new pieces, I posed for her without knowing it. The piece was created off a candid photo Shizu took of Uriel Urban and I in my Mexico City apartment, while she was in town for the `Phantom Sightings‘ opening at the Tamayo. It is called ‘Daniel y Uriel,’ and is colored pencil on paper with a washi paper collage. It is on view in San Jose, until May 29.”

Hernandez is currently working on a book about Mexico, Mexico City and youth subcultures from his base in the city’s Centro Historico. How does he feel about being part of the focus of Saldamando’s attentions, who he himself describes as “an intimate chronicler of multiethnic youth subcultures.”

“Shizu Saldamando is one of the most distinctive young artists working in California. Her style is so sharp and identifiable, and always loving to her subjects. So I was pretty thrilled to see how she rendered my persona, and my grandmother’s old quilt,” he told us.

– Deborah Bonello in Mexico City for la Plaza.

Image: Daniel y Uriel, colored pencil, collage on paper 30×40 inches. Provided by the artist, Shizu Saldamando.

You may remember Colombian street artist Bastardilla from the piece I did on La Plaza a few months back.