On Thursday, May 18, the Government of Mexico, through the Secretariat of Culture, celebrated the inauguration of the Mexican Pavilion at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale 2023, with the proposal "Utopian Infrastructure: The Campesino Basketball Court". The pavilion, which had an investment of 9,059,600 pesos, aims to invite dialogue and play to engage in conversations about the topics that concern the world of architecture in relation to various aspects of social, cultural, and political life.
During the opening ceremony at the Old Naval Complex of the Arsenale in Venice, Dolores Martinez Orralde, the Deputy General Director of INBAL (the Mexican government's cultural body responsible for preserving and disseminating Mexico's artistic heritage), accompanied by photographer Antonio Turok, the architectural curators, representatives of the APRDELESP firm, and the Biennale's coordinator, Mariana Munguía Matute, read a welcome message on behalf of Lucina Jiménez López, the General Director of INBAL. In the message, she emphasized that the Government of Mexico, through the Secretariat of Culture and INBAL, stated the following:
I appreciate the committed work of the team of artists and architects from Mexico, made up of Mariana Botey, artistic curator and researcher, as well as Rodrigo Escandón Cesarman and Guillermo González Ceballos, from the APRDELESP firm, who did the architectural curation and who together, through a public call, presented the project "Utopian Infrastructure: The Campesino Basketball Court". Together, they collaborated with the National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature [INBAL] to give life to this utopia: proposing to the Venice Biennale of Architecture a space for play where art, architecture, and living communities come together.
The inaugural ceremony was attended by Felicitas Vázquez Islas, the municipal president of Panotla, and Nancy Cortés Vázquez, the mayor of Amaxac de Guerrero in the state of Tlaxcala. Additionally, there was a performance of the Catrines de los Huehues Dance, a popular dance, at the Biennale to bring life to this basketball court, much like in any celebration that finds its roots in ritual, as a form of decolonization and a profound sense of community.
The campesino court is that place where the present is the root of the future. That is why inhabiting it, in all possible forms, is part of the game of our social, economic, bioethical, and biopolitical life.
This project features the kiosk design by Fabien Cappello; photography by Brian Cross, Eunice Adorno and Jorge Santiago; the film "Catârsis" by Antonio Turok, edited by Pablo Escoto Luna and Mariana Botey; graphic art presented with works by Dr. Lakra, Francisco Taka Fernández, and Karla Kaplun.
It also features the collaboration of Radio Nopal and "La manta de curación", created by the ecological center Milpa Urbana and the Tanivet Embroidering Ants collectives, a poem by Delmar Penka, as well as the graphic design of e+e, among other collaborators. On this first day, the campesino court was visited by 800 people and is becoming a place of intercultural encounter, of integration of the Biennial as a place of reflection in which the present and the future are at stake. It is also a place of utopia where the world in its micro or macrocosm seeks the best paths in a communitarian way.
The Mexican Pavilion will be open to the public from May 20 to November 26 at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2023. For more information, visit the official website of INBAL.
