{"componentChunkName":"component---src-templates-article-js","path":"/rojonegro-on-representing-mexico-at-the-61st-venice-biennale/","result":{"data":{"wordpressPost":{"id":121779,"slug":"rojonegro-on-representing-mexico-at-the-61st-venice-biennale","title":"RojoNegro on Representing Mexico at the 61st Venice Biennale","excerpt":"“We have a historical debt to all Indigenous peoples who protect resources and ecosystems”","content":"\n

“We have a historical debt to all Indigenous peoples who protect resources and ecosystems”

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ArtReview sent a questionnaire to artists and curators exhibiting in and curating the various national pavilions of the 2026 Venice Biennale, the responses to which will be published daily in the leadup to and during the Venice Biennale, which runs from 9 May through 22 November.

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RojoNegro (María Sosa and Noé Martínez) is representing Mexico; the pavilion is in the Arsenale.

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Celebrating Visions. Versace partners with ArtReview to share stories from the 2026 Venice Biennale.

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\"María
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ArtReview Tell ArtReview what you plan to exhibit in Venice. What has influenced or inspired you?

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RojoNegro We are exhibiting an installation composed of a video, paintings made with natural dyes, a series of ceramics, a sculpture of clay and salt constructed in situ, and a sound work commissioned from the artist Alberto Rubí. This group of works engages with many historical and present ways of resisting. We titled it Invisible Acts to Sustain the Universe because we want to speak about the efforts that the hegemonic gaze attempts to forget. There are entire generations that have sustained the kinds of knowledge that lie at the heart of the resilience of Indigenous peoples and that, at the same time, are the backbone of our artistic practice.

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We conceive this pavilion as an offering to our ancestors and to the people who sustain our present through their invisible acts. Those who are currently restoring the cycles of life and death, healing the spirit of ancient colonial wounds and present capitalist wounds. This series of works crystallises more than ten years of artistic research as a duo, which has also been a process of political formation accompanied by multiple collaborators.

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Our influences originate in diverse disciplines and contexts, from texts by anthropologists such as Alfredo López Austin, Mercedes de la Garza, Juan Gallardo, Carlo Bonfiglioli, choreographers such as Akram Khan, filmmakers such as Apichatpong Weerasethakul, as well as the collaborators and colleagues with whom we had the opportunity to work on this pavilion, master artisans and friends engaged in ethnography and history.

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AR In what ways (if at all) does your work relate to the theme of the Biennale exhibition, In Minor Keys?

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RN We think about pauses, about halting habits, engaging in acts of reflection and empathy, becoming aware while walking, looking and creating. Our pavilion is a call to quiet knowledge, to rebuild from silence and calm.

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The context of the Biennale has wide visibility, and this led us to ask, how could a message of pause be transmitted? We believe that the theme of the Biennale echoes this call from and for humanity.

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AR Why is the Venice Biennale still important, if at all?

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RN It is a global stage, a meeting point for many agents of contemporary art at a very large scale. Its importance is evident within an institutional and sometimes commercial art context, but another perspective is the importance that we as artists assign to it – those of us who participate and those who do not, depending on the case. The importance of an event that accumulates so much desire and symbolic value is a decision for each artist. For us, it is an opportunity to make visible knowledge and ways of feeling, thinking and relating from Indigenous peoples, that are part of our ethics and artistic practice. Bringing these into dialogue with a Western and hegemonic milieu is important and a historical duty of our art.

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AR What role does a national pavilion play at a time of increasing confrontational nationalisms? Is it about expressing difference or commonality?

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RN There are many approaches to current nationalisms. We are going through a very complex moment in which the critical, philosophical or even artistic resources that we have accumulated as humanity can often be instrumentalised for outdated, fundamentalist and closed ideologies.

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We belong to an extremely plural nation. We are a country with a colonial past and with an enormous history of cultural resistance by the peoples that were once pre-Hispanic nations. For us, nationalism encompasses a plural voice.

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In Zapatista terms, we think of a country in which all nations can fit, and never a Mexico without all the nations that inhabit its territory. The dozens of languages and ways of naming and relating to the world are part of our concept of nation, and our presentation for this Biennale is a small grain of sand in the deconstruction of the idea of nationality as a homogenising articulation of a territory and its population.

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Actos invisibles para sostener el universo, installation view, Venice, 2026. Photo: Jacopo Salvi. Courtesy La Biennale di Venezia
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AR Who, for you, is the most important artist (in any discipline) that your country has produced?

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RN To mention in a single body and history the creative becoming of a country is difficult, because we believe in collective voices. We can mention the traditional artists and artisans – that is, weavers, potters, woodworkers, workers in metal, basketry and paper, musicians and dancers, poets in Indigenous languages – who are maintaining an epistemology of creation with their hands and oral history as their only resources, forming the backbone that carries the creative thoughts of our country.

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AR What is something you want people to know about your nation that they might not know already?

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RN That in less than one square kilometre in Mexico City there are more than 50 Indigenous languages being spoken. That we have a historical debt to all Indigenous peoples who protect resources and ecosystems. That the legitimate owners of the territories are still waiting for social justice. And that in this context, creative will continues to persist.

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AR Given that you are exhibiting in a national pavilion, is there something (a quality or an issue or attitude) that distinguishes the art of that nation from that of others? That makes it particular? Are there specific contexts that it responds to? Or do you think that art is a universal language that goes beyond social, political or geographic boundaries?

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RN Our art is plural. Plurality distinguishes artistic creation and thought in Mexico. The problems are different in each area of the territory, and so are the creative responses. Diversity is a very evident distinction.

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Art responds to specific contexts with universal values, such as life, peace, freedom. There is no division between the specific and the universal if the scale of values is aligned with humanism and with privileging life, justice and the protection of the planet.

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AR What, other than art, are you looking forward to seeing – or doing – while you are in Venice?

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RN Walking and discovering everyday life.

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AR Could you give us a brief overview of your average working day while creating your presentation in Venice?

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RN Each day is different. The only constant is the start and finish times. Each day brings different challenges – technical, logistical, political – and an internal dialogue with ourselves. The Biennale is a challenging environment in many ways, and that is why each day’s agenda is different.

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AR Can art really change the world?

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RN Art can transform people, and people change, build and destroy the world. In short, yes – but not in the way hegemonic narratives propose change. It is a small, long-term change that requires patience and can easily be lost without proper care. It is a long-term way of thinking. A line, a movement of the spine or a sound carries incalculable consequences.

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The 61st Venice Biennale runs 9 May through 22 November 2026

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