Éramos felices y no lo sabíamos

Ixel Rion Lora

The 1990s were a decade of euphoria when everything seemed possible; every question had an answer and difficulties would soon find a solution. Globalization was arriving in a Mexico that aspired to economic and social development, and the Federal District – as Mexico City was then known – was the first stop. This globalization brought to the country a wider circulation of information and access to magazines, texts, cinema and music, leading to an explosion of visual culture. The proliferation of cultural activities led to a change in the forms of production and exhibition of works of art.

Over this decade there emerged in Mexico a generation of young and alternative artists who came to transform the art scene in the country, as a decisive response to the Neo-Mexicanism movement that had become entrenched in the art market as well as in state institutions. They all shared a desire to create a different, diverse art in the urban context, and above all in one of the largest and most complex capital cities in the world: Mexico City.

We were happy and we didn’t know it includes pieces from the Jumex Collection and encompasses almost two decades of production, from the mid-1990s to the first ten years of the new millennium. The exhibition brings together works by twenty-eight artists who formed part of the extensive artistic community at that time. Those years were essential for the production of work in Mexico, for the maturing of these artists and their innovative proposals. Several factors combined to shape this epoch in contemporary art, as the historical moment – one among many changes – was fundamental to catalysing this transition. It is no coincidence that the country and, above all, Mexico City, proved attractive to foreign artists who joined this already heterogenous scene. Several continue to live and work in the country, and can no longer be considered foreigners.

To understand the climate in which this revolution in artistic output took place, we must explore five themes that serve as focal points for the exhibition: ‘City’, ‘Space’, ‘Social Context’, ‘Identity’ and ‘Materiality’. These threads help to make sense of the historical and social moment experienced by the artists that led them to produce the works brought together in the show. The endless party of the 1990s gave way to the morning-after of the new millennium. A hangover with a flavour of maturity, in a more globalized context.

We were happy and we didn’t know it presents a journey in homage to the youthful excess that marked artistic creation in the urban context of Mexico City. All stories begin with a situation that lead us to a knot (or conflict) and end with a denouement. The knot began to be tied with the arrival of the new millennium and continues to date. The denouement remains uncertain. In this story, presented in exhibition format, the protagonists decided to change the course of art around them, with their choices shaping art as we know it today. As in every good story, several key figures were left by the wayside, while those who remained took on board the changes and, after a period of continuous unbridled yet unpretentious partying, continue carving out a path towards the international art scene.

In the face of an uncertain future, nostalgia helps us to ascribe meaning to the present and to afford us a sense of belonging. The work of the artists assembled in this exhibition generated an atmosphere in which all were part of one system: that of art. With the passage of time, what remains of these creatives is their works, which serve as testimonies to a period and a moment, even beyond the lasting fame of the artist. ‘Things change. And friends leave. Life doesn’t stop for anyone.’

The DeFe, DeFectuoso, the urban sprawl that goes by the name of Mexico City, has always been a quantitative yardstick for progress, modernity, and the avant-garde for the country as a whole. The capital strives to be closer (or more alike) the ‘First World’ and further away from the ‘Developing’ or, worse, the ‘Third World’. In the 1990s the city was a chaotic and complex place on the point of change, but its arts and culture scene was thriving. With a city centre (in the vicinity of the Zocalo) where people looked for work on a daily basis, with a middle class who enjoyed access to cable television, youth who could watch music videos on MTV, travel to the United States, drink a beer in the park and watch European films (subtitled, naturally) at the Cineteca Nacional. A vast beast that never slept, nicknamed the DeFectuoso – ‘defective’ – and more fondly known as the DeFe – from ‘Distrito Federal’.

The Federal District gave way to Mexico City, a more global, modern, complex and densely populated megalopolis riven by tremendous polarization. In a matter of a few blocks the landscape can change enormously; a bridge can separate a neighbourhood of half-built, improvised homes from a gated community where the houses have finishes in imported marble. The city has always been this way, as eccentric as it is bipolar. A metropolis that constantly provides and that offered a young generation of artists on low budgets materials that they found on the streets, together with countless scenarios that served to trigger the production of works both ephemeral and tangible.

Like in all great cities, space is a complex theme. The clash between public and private space becomes ever more troublesome, while the line separating one from the other becomes blurred or disappears altogether. In the 1990s, both public space and private spaces dedicated to art were few and far between.

The artists who began to develop a different kind of practice clearly did not fit into the public museums nor the few local galleries. In the early nineties, the established artists were finding prominence on the New York art market and in the city’s institutional galleries. Their counterpart was a mixed group of young artists who had lived or spent short periods in the United States and brought back to Mexico a huge thirst to exhibit, to take risks, to use new media and to dare to do all of this outside of institutions and the market. Many of them found spaces in abandoned buildings that had been passed over by the tides of gentrification. Such spaces that emerged in Mexico City included La Quiñonera (1986-), Temístocles 44 (1993-1995), La Panadería (1994-2002), Art Deposit (1996) and the Taller de los viernes (1987-1992), among others.

The ‘alternative’ spaces of the 1990s served as a breeding ground for ideas and attitudes that broke free from the parameters established by cultural and political institutions. Their value doesn’t lie in the generation of finished cultural products or in the promotion of personalities, but in the possibility of exchange among the members of a specific community in the present time.

These projects brought together people from different generations and artistic disciplines. Over this period and until the turn of the century, this flourishing group kept active – in parallel to pursuing their own work – the city’s many independent art spaces. These did not only offer exhibitions but also roundtables, symposiums, colloquiums, concerts – and above all, parties. Night time in the capital saw gatherings of artists, musicians, poets, fans and other hangers-on at these spaces where social conventions were non-existent and unnecessary.

The year 1994 was a watershed for Mexico – an awful year, in short. This was a year that saw the country shattered socially, economically, culturally and educationally.

On January 1, 1994, Mexico embarked on a new era with the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The same day, the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) launched an armed uprising in the state of Chiapas in protest against globalization and neoliberalism. Two assassinations that year defined the political stage. On March 23, the presidential candidate for the PRI party (Institutional Revolutionary Party), Luis Donaldo Colosio, was shot dead in Lomas Taurinas, Tijuana, while the general secretary of the party, José Francisco Ruiz Massieu, was killed on September 28 on Lafragua street in Mexico City. Meanwhile, the economy was tanking. The ‘Tequila Effect’, also known as the ‘December Mistake’, was a financial crisis that led to the devaluation of the Mexican peso (by 300% compared to the US dollar) and triggered months of high inflation, which in turn caused capital shortages for the banking system and significant instability in business activity and the jobs market.

It was against this backdrop and in the aftermath of this annus horribilis that a major and significant transformation in Mexican art took place. Indeed, it is precisely at such moments of great uncertainty that creativity seeks out new paths to find a way through the situation and, as a result, producing testimonies of the epoch. Not all art is – nor should be – political, yet the works produced over this long period of national crisis, which now extends to several decades, form a part of the contemporary history of the country. From the complex and varied perspectives of their artists, the works produced bear witness to our collective successes and failures as a society, interrogating what defines us and what separates us, while pointing to the mistakes we continue to make, as well as the distinctive humour that characterizes us.

Neo-Mexicanism was a decisively pictorial movement, one that focused on the representation of national identity. However, the new generation of creatives had neither the desire nor the intention to follow in their path. Nor did their practice seek the approval of academia or state institutions. It may well be that the feeling was mutual.

Instead, the artists of the 1990s chose to generate their own spaces for creation and exhibition. This was evidence of their search for a creative identity. Many of them took on different roles as artists, creators, cultural managers, or mentors. There was a desire for change, and they embraced it. Part of the process of producing art is connected to the search for personal identity. Whether due to their age (all were in their twenties and thirties), their early proposals reacted against their context, and did not seek the validation of the establishment – rather the contrary. The works produced in this period drew closer to local circumstances in order to speak of a globalized world, as well as being more personal, in order to speak of the collective. Likewise, collaboration took on an important role in contemporary Mexican art. It is more than likely that the seeds for such collaborations were sown well after midnight, over heated discussions about the art produced there and elsewhere, with the resulting decisions being passionately toasted. Without doubt, the sense of camaraderie among artists was key to the identity of the work they produced in the 1990s.

As Silvia Gruner recalls, looking back at this period: ‘It’s absolutely true that we were pretty isolated and left to our own devices in the nineties, so we had fun and did whatever we liked. It was an important moment, when a lot of people came together who had been working together for a long time.’

With the development of a new identity in contemporary art, new materials were required. These reached artists’ hands in different ways: on the one hand, new audio-visual technologies appeared in the country, not only limited to reproduction but also recording and editing thanks to devices that were both easier to operate and more portable; and on the other, increased access to an unprecedented range of printed material and music.

The arrival in Mexico of new materials and supports helped artists to maintain the distance they sought with painting, the medium that the preceding generation had clung to. Similarly, production was kept apart from the vaunted modernity, with a focus on recycling and reuse of many different materials. As a result, works with an ephemeral character and performance pieces were frequent in this period. Finding one’s own voice in this alternative arts scene depended on the choice of materials: soft toys, cardboard, masks, ice, chewing gum and dolls were just some of the non-traditional objects that were ‘elevated’ into artworks. Also popular was the use of found materials, and gestures and actions carried out against the urban backdrop. However, this trend changed again with the arrival of the new millennium. The following decade was characterized by the significant development of new technologies, which brought with it a vast circulation of images and information of all kinds.