Jesper Just: Coordenadas

Curated by the Anissa Touati, “Coordenadas” presents two video installations, one about the Muxe community and the other one regarding the territorial conflicts that take place in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, State of Oaxaca. This is the first time the Danish artist Jesper Just exhibits his work in Mexico.

For “Coordenadas”, Jesper Just chose the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca, where the Muxe community1 lives and where the Bowman Expeditions supported by the US Army took place to explore and map the region.

The artist focuses on the culture of the communities of the Isthmus as well as on the territorial conflict faced by the inhabitants of that area, who fight for the autonomy of their territory. According to the idea of “representing social difference in a spatial form”2, in Coordenadas two video installations are exhibited: the first one takes place in the esplanade of the Museum: in front of the Anahuacalli it has been installed a preventive archaeological tent as if a discovery had just happened, which houses an installation and a video of the windy Zapotec landscape of Juchitán, where the snowflakes are juxtaposed to a ceremonial center. These moving points can be interpreted as strategic points on the map, as they were in the Bowman Expeditions.

The second video takes place in space of the Anahuacalli known as the Diego Rivera Studio. It is here where a direct relation to the name of the exhibition is shown. The video shows people from the Muxe community embroidering in a traditional way; the movement of the needles composes a sound landscape about desire and the silent act of challenging.