LOURDES GROBET AND THE LTCI, AT CASA DE MÉXICO

By Álvaro de Benito

The Fundación Casa de México in Spain presents the exhibition Lourdes Grobet y el Laboratorio de Teatro Campesino e Indígena, a selection of nearly seventy photographs from the project developed by Lourdes Grobet (Mexico City, Mexico, 1940–2022) around the Laboratorio de Teatro Campesino e Indígena (LTCI) (Peasant and Indigenous Theatre Laboratory).

LOURDES GROBET AND THE LTCI, AT CASA DE MÉXICO

The LTCI was a revolutionary initiative founded and led for half a century by playwright María Alicia Martínez Medrano. Conceived as a space for collective theatrical creation with indigenous communities from southeastern Mexico, its primary goal was the documentation and preservation of oral traditions. Among the groups most actively involved in this theatrical creation—and in using it as a tool for expression and resistance—were members of the Chontal, Chol, Zoque, Maya, Mayo, and Náhuatl peoples.

 

Grobet was a witness to the entire process and, as such, documented its creation and evolution in a visual archive that captured the group’s activities. This documentation, consisting of over 25,000 photographs, was later compiled in Laboratorio de Teatro Campesino e Indígena. Medio siglo de historia (Peasant and Indigenous Theatre Laboratory. Half a Century of History), edited by Grobet herself and published the year of her death.

The exhibition is curated by Beatriz Mackenzie and Ximena Pérez Grobet and is part of the official program of the 28th edition of the PHotoESPAÑA Festival.

Lourdes Grobet and the Laboratorio de Teatro Campesino e Indígena can be visited through August 31 at Fundación Casa de México in Spain, located at Alberto Aguilera 20, Madrid (Spain).

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