What did MUAC and Ana Gallardo do wrong

The Mexico City museum’s exhibition of Gallardo’s work caused a storm in the city’s art scene. The following told us everything we need to know about art and censorship today

Ana Gallardo’s traveling anthology exhibition A delirium trembled here opened at MUAC Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City, on August 10. The Argentinian artist has been a constant presence in the city since her arrival over a decade ago, and her efforts to provide residencies and studio spaces for artists hailing from her hometown have been an important community builder for relations between Buenos Aires- Mexico City. However, the response to the show was generally muted. That all changed on October 9 when Casa Xochiquetzal, a shelter for elderly sex workers located in the Centro district of Mexico City, published an open letter to MUAC. In it, they explained why they were offended by two pieces exhibited together in the show: Extracto looks like a failed project (Excerpt for a failed project, 2011-2024) and Untitled (Untitled, 2011).

The works are damning for all involved. The first is a roughly 300-word stream-of-consciousness mural roughly carved into the gallery wall that recounts Gallardo’s feelings after approaching the shelter about a potential state-funded project in 2011. In the first two lines, Gallardo calls the residents of the “old street whore” house. She sounds indignant when asked to do some work in exchange for access: “How could he do this to me… take care of Estela, a sick old whore(,) ce hija de puta (a common Argentinian insult, like “son of a bitch” “but more “daughter of a whore”)”. Gallardo describes the woman’s condition as “lying in her own pee leaking from her diaper that she’s been wearing for days, the floor is sticky with shit, she’s dirty, she can’t move, she can’t do anything but cry and cry full of anger”. She recounts how she overcame her own disgust and intense fear, writing: “I almost throw up, I can’t take care of this woman, I can’t throw up three times, I’m falling on the street, I’m scared, but I’m going back to take care of her . she is always covered in flies born of her own shit I clean her hair I caress her hands’.

The mural refers to the form of “outrage”, the public denunciation of a person, usually a public figure or someone who has abused their power, and involves graffiti on their home, car or local neighborhood. However, in a crucial difference, Gallardo’s interpretation chooses to focus on a completely disempowered group. Projected next to it is untitled, a short, clandestine video, filmed without the permission of its subject, in which Gallardo’s hands persistently rub against another woman’s while they sit outside. In one continuous shot, tightly framed by a camera presumably attached to Gallardo’s chest, the woman’s face is carefully cropped: we see only a section of her chin and her limp hand between each of Gallardo’s. It’s unsettling to see Gallardo giving a hand massage to someone immobilized after suffering a series of strokes and therefore with little capacity to consent to Gallardo’s action. There is also something performative about the video’s reenactment of self-redemption.

The women who work at Casa Xochiquetzal to provide shelter, medicine and meals to a largely dispossessed group of individuals were naturally offended by the language Gallardo wielded—words long used to victimize and ostracize women sex workers . They also contested Gallardo’s invasion of privacy: They claim that other artists and documentarians always asked for permission to work with them and protected the residents’ identities. The fact that the video does not reveal the face of its subject is itself an implicit confirmation that Gallardo understood the boundaries he was crossing. Worse still is Gallardo’s abject depiction of conditions at Xochiquetzal, the accuracy of which his workers strongly dispute.

MUAC’s response was slow, then clumsy: first, on October 11, with a statement that essentially repeated facts about the play and reiterated the museum’s commitment to “the right to freedom of expression and thought, under the conditions established by the Mexican Constitution and The Universal Declaration of Human Rights”. Then they blocked access to the offending works, and finally, after a tumultuous weekend in which the facade of the museum was graffitied with “blankkka privilegiada” (“white privilege”, but with K’s added), “violence is not art” and “total”. respect for sex work’, shut down the entire show for a day. That evening, on October 15, MUAC issued another press release: “In an extraordinary session of the Curatorial and Programming Committee,” they agreed to remove the two offensive pieces; “after careful consideration of the ensuing debates and dialogue with representatives from Casa Xochiquetzal,” the curatorial team has now acknowledged its significant mistake and “offered an apology to the aggrieved parties,” citing Gallardo’s agreement with the move. A “public forum” will be held “at some point in the future.” So the next day the exhibition reopened: they had closed the door of the disputed gallery and placed a chair in front of it.

In the weeks since, public opinion – largely fueled by Instagram, X and some of the art press – has become a maelstrom of extreme opinion. On one side: the hardcore camp of identity politics, which erects subjects into protected classes without reproach—in this case, collectives of sex activists, online terminal feminists, and others thirsty for outrage. On the other: the fundamentalists of anti-cancellation culture, quickly turning criticism into trolling, abuse, violence and censorship. At this exhausted moment in social media culture, both perspectives are devoid of nuance and inflated with a touch of self-righteous narcissism.

That the nervous hand of the establishment decided to withdraw its own challenge should not be read as “censorship”. Instead, it reflects an abandonment of their duty to mediate between the affected party and the artist, and runs counter to MUAC’s own positioning as a progressive and open forum for debate, funded as it is by Mexico City’s largest public university and located on their grounds. Simply put: if the MUAC anticipated a negative response, then it should let the work remain in public trial. If they failed to see this coming, then boarding the works only serves to draw more attention to their institutional neglect. A museum owes its public the obligation to properly mediate the information they exhibit, as well as to facilitate their decision space.

The mural is certainly powerful in its revolt at the rebuke of one’s right, at the idea of ​​caring for the sick body of another human being. Is it vulnerable? Sure. Could it be read as cathartic and, in that sense, poetic? Probable. Is it good because it “got us talking”? So-called dialogue and attention seem to be the cheap coins of today’s art world. Is it also deliberately insulting and defamatory of a very poor, poorly funded infrastructure created by women to protect each other? All in all. Many of Gallardo’s defenders in the heated debate mourn the end of an era in which artists could act as sociologists and ethnographers within communities to which they had no connection, while lacking the necessary rigor, training, and careful ethics. They yearn for a time when the world of art had little bearing on the real world; Meanwhile, communities are moving away from being taken advantage of in the name of art, and museums are ill-equipped to deal with the growing schism between the two. Lack of self-criticism will only hinder effective strategies as the world moves into more complex crises.

Those who want art to shock or provoke remain in favor only when it fits their own definition of society’s ills. What has What has changed, then, is not the mechanics and systems of art world institutions and the works they platform, but the dissolution of the error of a public united by “universal” principles about what and for whom art is. The fact that institutions like MUAC have not recognized this points to an ominous future. If that’s how they reacted to friendly fire, it’s hard to say how they’ll react to whatever the global conservative turn will bring next.

Gaby Cepeda is a writer, critic and researcher living in Mexico City