The most recognized faces of Mexican contemporary art gathered Thursday night to give an apapacho. A sector hit by the cuts to the budgets and that has managed to get up not without much effort after the earthquake that meant the Covid-19 pandemic, was strong in an organized conclave to reward their best members. Artists from all over the country, representatives of the most important museums and the galleries that mark the trends of art in Mexico, had an evening to applaud their work around the blue sparrow awards, born from the bosom of the artistic world as an incentive. “In Mexico, many people are working with extremely small budgets, making it very desired to be able to do their work or to make exhibitions and prizes like this generate interest, as a community make us grow,” says artist Mario García Torres.
Garcia is the creator of these awards for contemporary art. The idea happened as a game in 2021, a year after the pandemic coup. “This whole story really began as a joke. I have an Instagram account of memesan account that somehow always tried to be a community thing. Many art people, especially visual arts, follow the account and there we laugh at our misfortune of being artists. Taking into account that there were all these people involved, at some point it occurred to me to say: “Why didn’t we organize and discuss what was the best exhibition of the year?” Immediately, among the enthusiasm that happened at the time, in the community we said, well, let’s do one thing of six different awards, categories of individual and collective exhibitions. And that happened very casual, the people nominated their friends, their cousins, and voted. I did a very ranchera thing there on the Instagram and then announced who the winner was, ”says the artist. The name of the award arises from one of the emoticons that Garcia used in his networks.
That social networks experiment grew to become prizes that the artist community now wants and protects as its own achievement. The awards have been delivered at the headquarters of the Tamayo Museum, Franz Mayer Museum and Thursday night at a Hall of the American Fiesta Hotel, on the emblematic Paseo de la Reforma de México. There he gathered the most select of the art world and Socialité Mexican to demonstrate the power of this city in the art world. “I would dare to say that if it is not the first, it is the second most important city in the world, that is, today we have an incredibly energy art scene. Despite the few budgets, people do incredible things. That is, the week of art, for example, has exploded in a way that I would never have thought about life. Garcia.
On Thursday night that artistic power was demonstrated by giving recognition to creators like the Belgian artist Francis Alÿs, one of the most recognized voices of contemporary art. Alÿs, who has been in Mexico for 40 years, thanked the “Ball of Cuates” who have prize his work. Frame Nuevo León: The future is not written. The award was collected by its director, Taiyana Pimentel. The Guanajuato Museum of Art and History was recognized as the Museum of the Year. Its director, Magdalena Zavala, thanked the prize and recognized the effort of the institution she directs in “decentralizing contemporary art” in the country. The great award of the night, the artist of the year, went to the creator Ana Segovia. The prize was collected by who defined himself as his “avatar”, Brandon Sales, who joked saying that “I feel that half of those present hate me the other half do not like them” and who asked the attendees “to remember the importance of mentioning the right pronouns.” The winners no longer receive the blue cap of the beginning of the awards, but a sculpture created by the artist García. “The idea is that everyone is a part, because it is a very community initiative,” says the artist. “We try not to take us so seriously, to generate that flexibility, but the important thing is to recognize the work, because in art many people are working with great desire to do their work,” reiterated the creator of the awards to recognize the effort of the contemporary artists of Mexico.
