Mauricio Limón

Mauricio Limón worked over the course of eleven months with neighbors who did not previously know one another but who all used the “Alameda”—Santa María la Ribera’s central park. One group of neighbors were members of the Forasteros de la Salsa dance troupe. The other was Oscar Jesús Ocaña, alias “El Tierno” (the tender one), a former inmate who dedicates his time to giving boxing classes in the park.

In an eleven-month process, Limón activated dynamics that allowed for the exchange of knowledge between dancing and boxing, in which “El Tierno” and Hannia, a young member of the dance group, carried out improvisations of boxing and choreographic routines, with the goal of empowering the creative possibilities of both types of activities. Through the use of these exercises, Limón created an intersection between two distinct practices in which violence and desire coincide in the use of the body as an element of subjectivation containing personal stories and memories.

In the final work, a two-channel video projection, the bodies of both characters were the protagonists in a dialogue that revealed the environment of everyday violence underlying Mexican urban culture. Accompanied by a chorus of male dancers, the work also deals with the tensions between the contrasting feminine and masculine worlds through Hannia’s active participation in activities that are commonly associated with virility.

—Josefa Ortega

Curators: Osvaldo Sánchez and Josefa Ortega
Final Project: Video installation/2-channel projection/Length 17' 26''.

Acknowledgments