KATES-FERRI PROJECTS and Galería MUY are proud to announce, El Encuentro / The Encounter an exhibition that brings together a group of artists from Chiapas Mexico collectively curated with the Espacio Artistico MUY.  The exhibition will take place in the Lower East Side of New York City, at Kates-Ferri projects from February 27 to March 29, 2025. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, March 1st at 563 Grand St, New York from 6-8 pm.

On view six varied and uniformly insightful, uniquely dexterous Mayan artists from the southern state of Chiapas, in Mexico, treat themes of their daily lives, their ancestral belief system, changing gender roles and a cri de guerre against ecological abuse, all with forthright decolonial self-affirmation. This show of 10 unique works from artists: Cecy Gómez, PH Joel, Antún Kojtom, Kayum Ma’ax, and Maruch Méndez range from painting, textile, mixed media, and sculpture is a joint initiative at Kates-Ferri Projects and with the Galería MUY.

Artists from the Maya and Zoque (M/Z) peoples, in the Mexican state of Chiapas, will present an exhibition of recent work, collectively curated with the Espacio Artístico MUY, A.C., exploring and creating new webs of meaning and cultural geographies among those dwelling on ancestral lands and those in globalized movement. Works made by creatives of Maya/Zoque cultures – both those in Chiapas and those outside – with tour in Mexico and the United States with a program of exhibitions, workshops, and conferences. The crisscross of dialogues will include Indigenous-to-Indigenous conversations as well as Latinx-to-Latinx and First Peoples-to-First Peoples. This project also will appeal to and engage the wider contemporary artworld.

Chiapanec Indigenous contemporary art – both street and easel – is in ready dialogue with popular, as well as museum-style, cultural life in Mexico and the US, valuing the ancestral while affirming universal contemporality. M/Z creatives are celebrated for their pastiche of self-taught and art-schooled styles referencing Classic Maya, traditional handicraft, emoticons and globalized visual culture, adept in all traditional and contemporary media, and dealing especially with identity, ecology, Indigenous resilience, and defense of territories.

About MUY:

MUY – the phoneme is the Mayan equivalent of the joy in enjoyment – is a cultural center and Indigenous artist-run space in San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas. 

Espacio Artístico MUY, A.C. is a Mexican independent artist-driven initiative dedicated to the production, exhibition, dissemination, and investigation of art and its role in evolving citizen participation, education, and personal development.

The MUY, initiated in 2014, is a legally constituted non-governmental (501c3 equivalent) organization based in San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico and has, in its permanent space, an artists’ workshop, exhibition galleries, a collection on permanent loan, archives for students of Indigenous art, and a residency program.  The organization is sustained through donations, volunteer activism, and sales revenues (strictly to offset costs). Co-directors Martha Alejandro and John Burstein (of Mexican and dual citizenship, respectively) presently coordinate a team of six collaborators.

Since December 2014, MUY has curated over 30 exhibitions of 20 Maya and Zoque artists working in the array of media: painting, sculpture, photography, video, installation, and performance, as well as literary and film production. As -- we argue – art is an experience, the “reading” or reception by M/Z audiences is part and parcel of what we do, with workshops and public art (murals, etc.) in more than eight major Maya and Zoque township/-pueblos in Chiapas. Art is also intercultural experience and MUY has facilitated Maya and Zoque artists being included in major national and international exhibitions, such as at the museums of Bellas Artes and world-class university-affiliated museums (MUAC and El Chopo), in Mexico City.

Available Art Work from Exhibition 

Video of exhibition on YouTube