Dark Back of Time in "El cuarto de máquinas"

Hilario Galguera inaugurates the project “El Cuarto de Máquinas” with remembrances and oblivions by two influential women artists.

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El cuarto de máquinas (or “machine room”) is a space of unlimited possibilities, existent for artists to present individual and experimental projects; a place conveyable to meet everyone’s needs. The space was envisioned in Berlin during the year 2010 by the same Hilario Galguera. As a matter of fact, el cuarto de máquinas collaborates with international artists, curators and writers from the national and international scene.

Now, the project will open its doors on the corner of Bucareli and Chapultepec Avenue, a place that endured through the history of Mexico City and since the country was still New Spain. A setting that has a lot of history itself, where the Army of Three Guarantees marched after the Mexican Independence victory. An area that, at the time, was appreciated from writers, artists journalists and politicians to meet. 

It is with eagerness that, on the 31st August, el cuarto de máquinas, presents its newest exhibition Dark Back on Time, a collection that stirs reflection on the mechanisms of remembrance, memory and oblivion, that travels through the sound of art by Vanessa Enríquez and Concepción Huerta.

Gabriela Mosqueda, curator of Dark Back of Time, tells us that memory is one of the most definitive qualities of a human being. We need memory for us to identify ourselves; we find ourselves through our reminiscences and through the visible and invisible scars that marked us, as well as the places, smells and environments that take us back to an old memory.     

It is significant to say that memory is elusive and imprecise, sometimes unfaithful as we often remember things associating them to how we felt rather than how they actually occurred. Past recollections may change with time as well, so we have been developing ways to keep track of what we consider perfect: photographs, videos, sounds to which we will eventually not be able to return either, the media in which we have recorded them became obsolete, they travel towards their blurring- as Javier Marías would say- to slide down the dark back of time, its invisible reverse side. Disappearance. Oblivion.

Gabriela Mosqueda also believes oblivion is as much needed as memory, to leave memories behind in order to recover from them. That's why memory and oblivion co-exist in the works of Vanessa Enríquez and Concepción Huerta.

About the Artists
Vanessa Enríquez (Mexico, 1973) is an interdisciplinary artist who uses different aspects of drawing to portray the polygonal nature of reality, with an emphasis on physics and non-dual philosophies, using the link between mind and matter, identifying the immaterial and material. Her works are accompanied by an installation renowned spatial drawings. 

Concepción Huerta (Mexico, 1986) uses sound as her art means. Her artworks focus on the creation of day-to-day life sound recordings, distorted by processed tapes in furtherance to produce narrative atmospheres. Her Foley and instruments familiarize with rudimental and encompassing elements, with the ability to engage the watcher (or listener) in a fictional story that disconnects them from any specific musical genre. 

Cover image: Vanessa Enríquez, Until I disappear (13), 2019. Courtesy of @HilarioGalguera