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| Heidrun Holzfeind 24 November 2007 – 20 January 2008 |
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MEXICO 68 The exhibition gathers a series of works that Heidrun Holzfeind realized in Mexico City beginning in 2005. Here the artist combines her interest in modernist architecture with her approach to a significant historical event, the 1968 student movement in Mexico, which shaped an entire generation. In the slide installation C.U. (Mexico City, August 2006), Holzfeind shows in double projection, 125 photos that she took of the Ciudad Universitaria, the Central University City Campus of the UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Latin America’s most important university). The campus was built under the management of architects Mario Pani, Enrique del Moral, and Carlos Lazo from 1950–52. UNESCO declared it an architectural world cultural heritage site in 2007 and cited it as “one of the most important icons in architecture and urban development in Latin America,” and “a monumental building, exemplary of twentieth-century modernism.” The structures combine modernist principles and materials, such as steel, glass, and exposed concrete with references to Mexico’s pre-Hispanic architecture and history, which are also expressed in huge murals and mosaics. The photographs show interior and exterior views of the various department buildings, architectural details, empty hallways, and classrooms, inside courtyards, parks, and sports facilities. The selection of details, the closeness and the eye for special features, draw an intimate and slightly melancholic portrait of the university city. Mexico 68, the second of Holzfeind’s exhibited works, comprises eight video interviews. Through intense research, the artist was able to carry out interviews with a total of nineteen protagonists from Mexico’s student movement in 1968. The Galerie im Taxispalais has commissioned German subtitles for the videos. In 1968, the political demand for democratization escalated to a major protest movement that included most universities and schools, also garnering the support of parents, professors, teachers, intellectuals, and artists. Shortly before the start of the summer Olympic Games in Mexico City, the government crushed the movement at gunpoint. There was a massacre on the Plaza de las tres Culturas in the Tlatelolco section of the city, whereby the military and police shot at participants holding a peaceful demonstration. Many were killed, thousands arrested. Numerous student leaders and intellectuals—including several of those whom Holzfeind interviewed—were imprisoned for nearly three years in the legendary Lecumberri prison. Holzfeind photographed this prison, which was closed down in 1980 and today houses Mexico’s National Archives. She shows photographs of the former wing in which the political prisoners from the student movement were held. The facility, which was built along the “panopticon” model with a central watchtower, facilitated total surveillance of the prisoners, day and night. Mexico 68 is supplemented with archive material documenting the demonstrations and gatherings of the student revolt. The interview texts, along with the photo series C.U., will be published in 2008 in a two-volume artist book produced in Mexico. Heidrun Holzfeind was born in Lienz in 1972. She lives and works in New York. |
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