The Agony and the [Mex]tasy: Feliz Cumpleaños México! September 16, 2010, 200 Years Young

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. Mexico in the throes of its worst domestic violence since the early 20th century--but there are no Villas or Zapatas afoot, more like Capone and Madoff running the show from Nuevo Laredo to Saltillo and beyond. Mexico at the brink of a renaiassance--a world class, first world embodiment of cultural invention and fusion: from Lucha Libre to futbol to Sabado Gigante to Univision, Mexico, the fountain of next-generation visual culture--del Toro, Cuaron, and Iñarritu, the three horsemen of the cinematic apocalypse.

So happy bicentennial, Mexico--buena suerte! May mala Fortuna turn away from you in the near future, in our newish century.

The show I am opening along the Rio Grande river in McAllen in two weeks, Mextasy, is dedicated to the old motherland and my peculiar fatherland. Mextasy is more than a representation of ecstasy about or for Mexico; it is about the sensuous tracings Mexican culture leaves on both sides of the border. More existential state than archive, Mextasy speaks to the living organism of Mexicanicity as it osmotically moves between the bodies of Mexico and the United States--an overt and covert delicious miasma that arouses as it excites, excites as it provokes.

¡Que viva Mexico!, within and without its borders.