Carlos Amorales presents 'Life in the Folds' at the Mexican Pavilion, Venice Biennale

Carlos Amorales (b. 1970) has created a multifaceted project for the Mexican Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Art Biennale. Titled 'Life in the Folds,' the exhibition borrows its name from Henri Michaux's 1949 novel and revolves around the construction of a coded alphabet. Amorales uses this invented language to write poems and musical scores, performed live by an ensemble using ocarinas shaped as letters. The show also includes an installation, a video work, and a free publication. A stop-motion animation film, 'La aldea maldita' (The Damned Village), explores language levels through the story of a migrant family lynched upon arrival in a foreign city. Amorales describes the project as emerging from the tension between the concrete and the abstract, where poetic images manifest in folds, ruptures, and interstices. The exhibition was produced by Mexico's Ministry of Culture through the National Institute of Fine Arts (INBA) and curated by Pablo León de la Barra.