Juan Acha: Despertar revolucionario / Juan Acha: Revolutionary Awakening

“Juan Acha: Revolutionary Awakening” is the first sample organized with documents from the Archivo Juan Acha. Curated by Joaquín Barriendos in collaboration with the Arkheia Documentation Center, the exhibition takes as its starting point an article written in 1970 in which Acha defines the avant-garde artistic behaviors that had begun to emerge in Latin America towards the end of the decade of The sixties as a cultural guerrilla. “The artists,” Acha affirms without hesitation, “are taking part in our revolutionary awakening; Begining to think and spread the need for a cultural revolution. “

The year in which the article that gave title to this exhibition was conceived marks a moment of inflection in the career of Juan Acha, since before being able to publish it Acha was imprisoned by the government of Velasco Alvarado, a self-proclaimed government like revolutionary Operated de facto as a military dictatorship. This situation motivated Acha to leave Lima to settle definitively in Mexico. The movement of the special collections of this archive to the museum halls has therefore been conceived as a round trip dialogue between Peru, Mexico and Latin America by Juan Acha.

The exhibition gives an account of the way in which Juan Acha used the critique to promote in Latin America the revolutionary awakening that he had not been able to experience in Lima; An awakening that, echoing the words of the Brazilian critic Mario Pedrosa, was conceived by Acha himself as the creative exercise of the sensorial, artistic, sexual and cognitive liberties unleashed with the political events of 1968.

“Juan Acha. Revolutionary Awakening” traces its different facets as a critic, researcher, curator, producer of theories, cultural activist and educator, putting special emphasis on its participation in the Mexican cultural circuit in which the groups fermented as well as in their role as organizer of international events like The Symposium of the First Latin American Biennial of Sao Paulo (1978) or the First Colloquium of Non-Objetual Art and Urban Art of Medellín (1981).

In addition to the Juan Acha Archive – donated to the UNAM in 2008 by the artist Mahia Biblos – this sample includes materials from Documentary Funds of the Arkheia Documentation Center as well as other funds from other countries. What characterizes most of these materials is that they are at the same time works of art and documentation of artistic processes, such as records of urban actions, mail art, or material inscriptions of conceptualist practices, all of them variants Of the non-object art that so interested Juan Acha.

With this exhibition, the MUAC closes a cycle of activities organized in Mexico and abroad to commemorate the centenary of Juan Acha.