"DISCO INFERNO" RAISES MEXICO'S DEAD AT GASWORKS, LONDON

The gallery Gasworks (London) presents on October 1st Disco Inferno, a new commission and the first European solo exhibition by Mexican artist Paloma Contreras Lomas. Moving between mediums, Paloma's work explores representations of her home country, examining how its historic and contemporary violences have been shaped through popular culture and media narratives. Flitting between folklore, literature, children's comics and her own personal histories, she employs grotesque, subculture aesthetics to critique patriarchal systems and their intersections with capital.

Disco Inferno invites visitors to experience Paloma's own interpretations of hell. Inspired by so-called Latin American Antigones – figures of moral courage and civil disobedience, who embody a clash between laws of the state and the moral imperative to resist them – the exhibition borrows from Dante's Inferno, which recounts the writer's fictionalised descent into hell through nine concentric circles. In Paloma's version, these circles include key moments from Mexico's history including: the 1920 Mexican Revolution, the Dirty War, the impacts of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in the 1990s, and the ongoing drug war and its cartel leaders.

The installation unfolds as a mise-en-scène reminiscent of a film set, with room-scale murals covering the walls of the gallery. Dripping with details of flesh-eating creatures, goblins and other miscreants, they recount a theatre of disappearance: a scenic ruin where horror is confronted, named and choreographed. Plush, fuzzy soft sculptures lurk in the corners of the space, at once horrifying and huggable. A stylised tzompantli (a Nahuatl term meaning "skull rack") assembles the heads of Paloma's cast of characters, while these ideas further condense in a new moving-image piece accompanied by an original soundtrack scored by Alejandro Nuñez (AKA ZutZut).

Paloma's unique visual vocabulary, that she refers to as "Mexican Baroque," is inspired by diverse references spanning Jim Henson's Dark Crystal; Tales from the Crypt and Sayak Valencia's Gore Capitalism. Disco Inferno raises the dead, with spectres, sound and remains from Mexico's past and present. It scrutinises how stereotypes, fuelled through mass media and politics alike, can shape the myths of a country, and the consequences those myths continue to produce.

Paloma Contreras Lomas (b. 1991, Mexico City) lives and works in Mexico City. Recent solo and duo exhibitions include LA ANTESALA, EstaciónMAZ, Zapopan, MX (2025); Paloma Contreras Lomas and Inés Doujak, Center for Research and Alliances, New York, US (2024); Sombras nada más (Espíritu TV), Pequod Co., Mexico City, MX (2023); ULTRAVIOLENCIA, Galería Agustina Ferreyra, San Juan, Puerto Rico (2022); siembra 33: Cartucho (la nación spiritual), siembra, kurimanzutto, Mexico City, MX (2021). Group shows include Kunstraum Kreuzberg, Berlin; Museo Anahuacalli, Mexico City, Mexico (both 2025); Desert X, Coachella Valley, Palm Springs, California, US; Commonwealth & Council, Los Angeles, California, US; Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo, Brazil (all 2023); Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, MX (2020). She graduated from Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado, La Esmeralda in 2015 and between 2016 and 2018 she participated in the SOMA Educational Program. Paloma was a member of the multidisciplinary collective Biquini Wax EPS (2015-2021).

Paloma Contreras Lomas: Disco Inferno will be on display from October 1st through December 13, 2026, at Gasworks, 155 Vauxhall Street, London, England.