Carolina Fusilier and Paloma Contreras Lomas Explore Death and Necropolitics at Museo Anahuacalli

Museo Anahuacalli in Mexico City presents 'How is Death Written in the South?' featuring artists Carolina Fusilier and Paloma Contreras Lomas through June 8, 2025. The exhibition engages with themes of death, tombs, and necropolitics within Diego Rivera's volcanic rock museum, which opened in 1964 to house his pre-Columbian collection. Contreras Lomas contributes 'Maqueta' (2025), an intricate altar with ceramic animal statuettes depicting a sacrificial dance club merging Aztec deity Xipe Totec with Dante's Virgil. Her large graphite drawings 'Southern funeral, paranormal archive' present a crucified creature with a snake's head atop a bone-covered car, accompanied by political commentary including '¡Viva Palestina Libre!' Fusilier's 'Pasajes I y II' paintings mimic the building's corbel arches, depicting technological portals addressing her father's recent death and the body's transition to the spiritual realm. Her 'Biocosmic garden' features dead plants reanimated by electronic motors, referencing Soviet Cosmism's vision of mass resurrection. The artists' contrasting approaches—Contreras Lomas's dark allegories of neoliberalism and Fusilier's poetic technological explorations—create a radical dialogue within Rivera's architectural legacy. The museum contains Rivera's sketches for his 1932 Rockefeller Center fresco 'Man at the Crossroads.'