span style=”font-size: 8.5pt; font-family: Verdana;”>Mónica Mayer (Mexico City, 1954), studied visual arts at the Escuela
Nacional de Artes Plásticas in Mexico City and in 1980 obtained a masters
degree in sociology of art at Goddard College while participating at the
Feminist Studio Workshop in Los Angeles, California. Her work has been
exhibited in over 100 group exhibitions in Mexico, the U.S. and Europe. A major
area of Mayer’s work has been performance art. In 1983 she formed Polvo
de Gallina Negra, the first feminist art group in Mexico with Maris
Bustamante. The group presented performances in the media and different social
interventions. Mayer also formed the group Tlacuilas y Retrateras,
another feminist art groups. Since 1989 she has participated in Pinto
mi Raya with Victor Lerma, which is an on-going piece on the Mexican
art system.

"Mónica Mayer is primarily a performance artist, but she is also a
feminist sociologist and—together with Victor Lerma—she has kept an exhaustive
archive of news articles about contemporary art. It is for this reason that she
curated the exhibition Una visita al archivo Olivier Debroise: entre la ficción
y el documento at the “Arkheia” Documentation Center of the Museo Universitario
de Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC) in 2011, taking into consideration the important
task of reactivating Olivier Debroise’s archive. Debroise, who lived and worked
in Mexico since the age of 17, was a prolific art historian focused on Mexican
art and through his research he created his own archive. Amongst the different
reactivation strategies Mayer included in the exhibition was the video of a
performance that seems to be nothing more than a simple dinner party amongst
friends.’ (Mireille Torres, Una cena mas by Monica Mayer, 2012, in e-misferica,
vol 9, On the Subject of Archive)         

Curated by : Kantuta Quiros & Aliocha Imhoff

Institut Culturel du Mexique – Plan
119 Rue Vieille du Temple 75003 Paris
Métro : Filles du Calvaire
Bus: 29
Entrée libre – https://mexiqueculture.org/