11:00 PM Covadondis in the
Roma neighbourhood: a large, old-fashioned bar where old men are playing dominos.
Every Thursday the artists come here for bohemian night, as Ramiro
Martínez had called it the night before. The waiters are wearing black
suits and ties. At some point the phone rings, the waiter calls out a name
and the whole bar screams out together, "Asshole." An old tradition,
explains Calderón. In the past there were only men at this bar–when a
woman would call looking for her husband, they would make a joke of it and
call him the "asshole." His grandfather also called him an asshole when he
tried to convince him, with the rest of his family, to let him take a
photograph of them in their underwear. The fact that in the end he was
able to photograph four generations almost naked in a family portrait, he
claims is thanks only to a trick: "My grandfather said none of this had
anything to do with art. I had to show him a letter from the Louvre
in order for him to participate." And? Calderón orders another round of
tequila. "I have a friend who is a curator at the Louvre. He wrote to my
grandfather, assuring him that I was a very important artist, and that he
must pose for me. He wasn’t totally convinced, but he undressed himself
nonetheless."
12:30 AM The party is upstairs at Covadondis.
We are celebrating the opening of the documentary film festival that Gael
García organized together with his friend Diego
Luna. Then the disappointment: Gael García flew off to the Berlinale
to promote his film under pressure from the producer. As a consolation,
Calderón introduces me to a long line of various models, actors,
musicians, the American director Tod
Solondz, one of the richest women in Mexico, and a woman from L.A. who
is thinking about starting a porn film production company. "This city is
hardcore", she says as she orders more tequila. The dj team, called
"Apokalypse", is wearing Versace
knock-offs and playing Kraftwerk.
Artist
Teresa Margolles next to one of her works
©Photo
Roberto Ortiz, 2006
Friday, 10.02.2006
10:00
AM A bit too morbid for a sunny morning like this: a meeting with Teresa
Margolles, who recently exhibited the pierced tongue of a murder
victim and created a fog throughout Berlin’s Kunstwerke with the water
used to wash dead bodies. Margolles looks small in her overalls and is
wearing black make-up. Though she speaks softly, she startles the world
with her words and seems to be that rare artist who is traumatized by her
own work.
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Teresa Margolles
©Photo
Roberto Ortiz, 2006
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No wonder: for her last exhibition in Houston, she went
through the border region between Mexico and the U.S.A., where 500 women
were killed. None of the murders were explained. With a little rental
truck, she went to the site where the bodies were found, lay in the bed of
the truck and tried to channel the murdered women. What was her last
thought? What was the last thing she heard? The bark of a dog? The sound
of a distant highway? At every site where a body was found she collected a
bit of earth and later mixed it with water. She made 500 bricks from this
clay, one for each woman. "What else could I do to show my solidarity?"
she asks, adding, "here in this country, where the life of a person is
worth nothing?"
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Teresa Margolles' main theme is death
©Photo
Roberto Ortiz, 2006
Santa
Muerte, the holy death
©Photo
Roberto Ortiz, 2006
12:00 noon
Betsabé Romero
is clearly in a much better mood. Jan Hendrix’s girlfriend is also an
artist. Romero takes us to her favourite markets where witches offer their
services and where you can buy all sorts of different powders that promise
anything from quick money to an active sex life. You can also purchase
figures of Santa Muerte, the holy death. Even better is the holy protector
of the marketplace–Santo Nino Aiguito, for whom they have built multiple
shrines: a blind child with holy tokens that fill the empty eye sockets. A
few streets further, in the market quarter, La Merced, you can find every
kind of vegetable and spice in its own respective hall. The chilli dealers
alone offer over one hundred different varieties.
Santo
Nino Aiguito, patron saint of the market
©Photo
Roberto Ortiz, 2006
©Phot:
Roberto Ortiz, 2006
2:00 PM
Lunch with Jan Hendrix, Betsabé Romero, and Ramiro Martínez at the Al
Andalus restaurant. Everyone is drinking tequila and beer. “That is
something I had to learn when I first came to Mexico City,” explains Jan
Hendrix. "You have to take care of everything important before noon. You
can never predict if you will make it back to work after lunch." Two hours
later, when I asked who was up for another tequila, everybody was with me.
"Stay for another week and you’ll never want to leave", Ramiro Martínez
says. His driver was waiting outside. Also a good reason to stay: everyone
here seems to have at least two in-house workers/drivers/cooks.
9:00
PM Return flight to Paris. In the Air
France Business Class you get everything but tequila.
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