Grupo Máxico presents LOS INVITADOS, an artistic pilgrimage in Venice, Italy, which will exhibit the work of 174 artists who relate part of their lives to Mexico. LOS INVITADOS is an international participation from Mexico in the Venice Art Biennale 2024, divided into three stages: exhibition in Venice, exhibition in Mexico City and a publication. Through this independent initiative, Grupo Máxico integrates frontiers and expands the possibilities of artistic discourses, inviting to reflect on the importance of plurality in the art world.
"The freedom of the other is the support of my essence"
Mexico City, April 25th, 2024 – Separately from Mexico's official participation –and the different exhibitions by Mexican artists– at the Venice Art Biennale 2024, Grupo Máxico, an art collective from Mexico, will carry out an artistic pilgrimage in which the work of 174 artists will be exhibited in different spaces in the city of Venice, Italy, as an "imaginary pavilion" that, through 6 artistic routes with 50 pieces elaborated from their relationship with Mexico and transported by the collective to Italian lands, will visit the historic venue of the Biennale under the name of LOS INVITADOS (THE GUESTS).
Grupo Máxico is an organization that promotes and disseminates Mexican culture and arts around the world. It has worked in collaboration with different artists for a decade. Its mission is to bring together artists from different circuits and ways of thinking regardless of their nationality, points of view, religion and/or politics. They have elaborated and presented diverse artistic projects such as Nuevas Constelaciones, El Futuro de la Magia, Pop-up Vuh I, II, III and Alta magia.
LOS INVITADOS is divided into three stages. The first stage includes this display of works throughout Venice: including the pavilions of the Biennale, private spaces, local businesses and some of the city's landmark buildings such as St. Mark's Basilica, the Arsenale di Venezia, the Giardini and Palazzo Barbo.
To this end, Grupo Máxico worked with fifty groups led by different artists such as Alina Sánchez, Álvaro Verduzco, Andronick Khachiian, Juan Caloca, Manuel Díaz, Marta Moreno, Michelle Sitton and Verónica Villegas, who, in turn, invited their own guests to participate in the project, giving a total of 174 artists who worked on the 50 pieces that can be seen by visitors to the 60th Venice Biennale, taking Mexico's participation on the international stage even further and providing a collective vision of the general theme, "Foreigners Everywhere," proposed by the Biennale's chief curator, Adriano Pedrosa.
In all of Grupo Máxico's projects, imagination and what can be considered fiction has a thin line between reality and the imaginary. LOS INVITADOS does not move away from this idea, however in this project reality and the tangible have more weight than fiction: it is necessary to open more participation channels in the great events of the art world.
With LOS INVITADOS' "Imaginary Pavilion", Grupo Máxico extends the questions about the cultural benefits of participating in the Biennial: Who chooses? What do they choose? Why and with what purpose do they choose? And, above all, should the boundaries of art remain so jealously guarded? Why not blur them? That is the fundamental idea of their proposal.
That is where fiction plays a relevant role. Starting from the real fact of the presence of LOS INVITADOS and their "Imaginary Pavilion" in Venice, cracks begin to open up about officialdom and the selected programs: If we can see a different art in a grocery store, in a bar, on a clothesline over one of the streets of the island, are we witnessing the Biennale or are new possibilities, perspectives and voices that ultimately converse with each other from the imagination and represent something natural in humanity such as migration, movement and multiculturalism, raised by the curatorial program of this edition of one of the most important events in the world of art –and its market–, being triggered? For Grupo Máxico, the answer lies in experiencing it from all possible angles.
The second stage of LOS INVITADOS will consist of an exhibition in Mexico City where works that have not remained in Venice after being exhibited at the Biennial will be shown, as well as a record of the artistic actions and the public's reactions to this "Imaginary Pavilion".
The third stage of LOS INVITADOS will be a publication that will compile the entire process of the journey from Mexico to Venice and back. This publication will offer an unexpected vision of the events that will take place during this artistic initiative.
LOS INVITADOS is an invitation to reflect upon plurality in art and the importance of opening new avenues of participation in the great events of the art world. Grupo Máxico seeks to unite frontiers and expand the possibilities of artistic discourses through this independent and plural initiative.
Venice Biennale