Oaxaca: Aqui No Pasa nada

OAXACA: AQUI NO PASA NADA is an exhibition and public billboard that responds to the socialpolitical conflict that erupted in Oaxaca between 2006 and 2007, featuring photography, visual art, videos, and a sound installation by artists living and working in Oaxaca, Mexico.

Presented by Guillermo Gomez-Pena's La Pocha Nostra and Galeria de la Raza, OAXACA: AQUI NO PASA NADA will feature photography by Mexico's leading political photographer Antonio Turok, the drawings and stencils of Oaxaca's foremost visual artist Demian Flores, a selection of videos by the artist collective Resistencia Visual curated by Isabel Rojas, and a sound installation by Radio Planton.

In conjunction with the exhibition, on Wednesday, October 17, Galeria and La Pocha Nostra will host an evening with the Oaxacan artists, Antonio Turok, Demian Flores and Isabel Rojas. The conversation will be moderated by the Chicano activist and theorist, Jose Palafox and performance artist Guillermo Gomez-Pena.

Guillermo Gomez-Pena and members of his troupe La Pocha Nostra were in Oaxaca for three weeks in August 2006 conducting their annual "summer school" with a contingent of fifteen artists from around the globe, along with ten scholarship students from Oaxaca and Mexico City. Upon his return to San Francisco, Gomez-Pena immediately started developing this project in order to provide a brief respite and a platform for the invited artists to engage in a political and cultural dialogue with San Francisco's arts community about the troubled circumstances that continue to plague Oaxaca.

Oaxaca: Aqui no pasa nada was organized by La Curtiduria, an independent cultural space in Oaxaca, founded in 2006 to promote civic dialogue. The exhibition is the result of what was developed after the onset of the social conflict, of the consciousness and courage that comes from individual action, and the transformation of reality made possible through community organizing.