Mario García Torres at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, NuMu, in Guatemala

“To enumerate makes it possible to remember. Remembering leads to the elaboration of a story susceptible of being told. The complex exercise of memory confronts the individual with the collective version of history: the lived experience as opposed to the established version. The act of remembering is linked to the events in which we have been witnesses or protagonists, and to the imprint these have left on us. As Walter Benjamin pointed out, there is a clear distinction between the conveyed experience and the lived experience; the former guarantees the continuity of the historical account from one generation to the next, while the latter makes room for the words of the individual, with its his/her frailties and his/her subjectivities. The complex gap between these two versions of history has repercussions in the field of politics; a new writing of history becomes necessary in order to achieve a reconfiguration of society.”

“ The title of Mario García Torres’ exhibition, Cuatro repisas, dos lámparas, un trozo de tela, un pedazo de película rayada, algunos objetos con significado encontrados por ahí y un poco de sal de todos, 2013 enunciates in an austere and direct way the elements that comprise the installation. All the objects are mentioned in an identical way, without any greater hierarchy than the one determined by their number or amount. Some of the objects ( Sin titulo/Untitled, 2013) are small ceramic containers. García Torres proposes a gesture, simple in its enunciation but complex at the moment of being implemented: he asks the people living in the neighborhood of the museum for a small amount of salt and gathers the salt that has been collected in the exhibition space. This action invites the spectator to recall that a social fabric, a past, some neighbors once existed. A conviviality that is still recoverable and imaginable, made visible through the number of ceramic pieces and the salt mound.”

“On the other hand, a similar – but personal – gesture appears in a piece of film stock that the artist carried in his pocket during the days when he was preparing the exhibition (( July 2013, 2013). This silent and private activity is made visible via the passage of light.”

“The exhibition evokes a collective, enumerated memory, which summons people around the museum, and claims it as its own.”

Mario García Torres

Mario García Torres received his MA from the University of Monterrey and obtained an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. Among his most recent exhibitions, mention may be made of “A Telltale of a Sunday Practice,” Taka Ishii, Tokyo, Japan (solo show); “September Piece”, Galerie Jan Mot, Brussels (solo show); and the group show “Des Mondes Possibles” at FRAC - Franche-Comté, Besançon. In 2012, he participated in the group show “When Attitudes Became Form Become Attitudes”, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco, and in dOCUMENTA 13, among others, and in 2013, he will participate in the 9th Mercosur Biennial, Porto Alegre, Brazil.
García Torres has also shown in the 54th Venice Biennale 2011, in the 9th Panama Biennial, the Yokohama Triennial, and in institutions such as the the Kunsthalle, Zurich; the Barbican (London); the Museum of Modern Art Syros (Syros); the Kadist Art Foundation (Paris); Tate Modern (London); Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (Vienna); Kunstverein fur die Rheinlande und Westfalen, (Dusseldorf); Frankfut Kunstverei; and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. He currently lives and works in Mexico City.

About the NuMu:

The New Museum of Contemporary Art is the first museum of contemporary art in Guatemala, devoted to the presentation, discussion, documentation and formation processes of this art in Guatemala and in the international context. It was created thanks to the generous support of the Friends of the NuMu, as a collaborative project by Jessica Kairé and Stefan Benchoam. Kairé lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she develops her activity as an artist and also as a teacher at the Judd Foundation, the Tenement Museum and Urban Arts Partnership. Benchoam ia an artist and curator, co-director of Ultraviolet Projects (http://uvuvuv.com), artistic director of suelta (http://sueltasuelta.es) – a fortnightly online publication that seeks to generate a dialogue between current Latin American art and literature ( ( – and a partner in the Bureau of Public Interventions (http://elbipbip.com).

NuMu’s annual program consists of four exhibitions including a formative component. Besides, it carries out interdisciplinary projects during the intervals between exhibitions, and it has its own Sculpture Garden, proposed and inaugurated by Emiliano Valdés, curator.

About the curator:

María Inés Rodríguez is an independent curator and editor of Tropical Papers Editions. Since 2013, she has been the director of HWinc in Berlín, a platform for projects and reflection on the domestic space. She served as Chief Curator at the University Museum of Contemporary Art – UNAM, in Mexico City. Between 2009 and 2011, she was Chief Curator of MUSAC, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Castile y Leon. She was the director of the AA MUSAC Art and Architecture Collection, created in 2010, and she published the monographs Modernidad Tropical, Alexander Apóstol y Yona Friedman. Until 2012, she was co-editor of the RADAR, arte y pensamiento MUSAC magazine. She was guest curator for the Paris Jeu de Paume 2008-2009 Satellite program, and editor of the French art publication Point d’ironie during the same period.
As an independent curator and art critic, she has organized exhibitions and promoted projects revolving around the strategies of appropriation of the public space in contemporary art spaces related to art, design, architecture and urban planning. Her interest in printed editions has led her to organize lectures and exhibitions associated to the subject, creating in 2005 Tropical Paper Editions, aimed at developing artists’ editorial projects, whether printed or on line. She has also published the newspapers Instant City, Bogotham City and Sueño de Casa Propia.