Uncontrollable Resources and Other Natural Displacements

Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC)

Ciudad de México, México

Curaduría: Oliver Debroise

November 2008

Uncontrollable Resources and Other Natural Displacements, a selection of the collection of the University Contemporary Art Museum (MUAC), was a collective exhibit that explored the constant references to nature there are in the practice of contemporary art.

The participation in this project obliged to condition museographically the brand new rooms 1, 2 and 3 of the recently opened museum to respond to the curatorial needs and technical needs of the work. To achieve this, the exhibit, divided into three thematic cores, presented the contradictions existing between today’s mechanical artificial chores and nature.

In the first part of the exhibit were the pieces which used organic materials or which sketched, metaphorically, the relationship between humans and nature. The second section emphasized the artificial aspect of the “art object” by including pieces which produce unstabilizing sensations and which affect the way we perceive the reality. This works establish the artist’s figure as that of something that alters what is natural by questioning its dimension in the world and becoming part of it as another object. Finally, the third section included pieces whose theme is memory, the passing of time and the effect it has in the human nature.

The curatorship of this reading of the MUAC collection was undertaken by Olivier Debroise (1952-2008), prominent critic, art historian and writer.