This November, the Museo de la Ciudad de México will present Columna Rota/Broken Column, an exhibition of unprecedented scale that brings together more than 125 contributors to examine rejection as a structuring force in both private life and collective history. Conceived by Francisco Berzunza, Diego Aramburu, Maria Inés Parra, Gabriella Nugent, Jaime Ruiz, Francesca Manfredini, Jimena Bernot, Otro Bureau and a group of friends; with texts by Chloe Aridjis, Ruben Gallo, María Minera, Michael Synder, and Mauricio Tenorio, amongst others, the project reframes the very idea of authorship: rather than a single curatorial voice, the exhibition unfolds through a chorus of artists, writers, performers, and archival documents, positioning Mexico City at the center of a global conversation on experimental and politically engaged art.
Extending across the Museo de la Ciudad de México, the neighboring Church of Jesús Nazareno, and the surrounding streets, the exhibition situates rejection as both subject and method. Its location is itself symbolic: the intersection where legend places the first meeting of Hernán Cortés and Moctezuma II, and where an Aztec serpent monolith is embedded in the colonial palace façade. Inside the church, José Clemente Orozco’s rarely seen late mural Apocalypse (1942–44) sets the tone of defiance and rupture.
The works gathered for Columna Rota are as diverse as the experiences of exclusion they evoke. In the museum’s central courtyard, José Eduardo Barajas has created a twenty-by-twenty-meter painting suspended overhead, converting the open air into a canopy of color and shadow. Teresa Margolles, in her searing installation In the Air, releases delicate soap bubbles formed from water that once washed the bodies of the dead, collapsing beauty and mortality into the same breath. The work is rooted in Mexico’s ongoing human rights crisis, where thousands have been killed or forcibly disappeared in recent years, making the piece both a memorial and a political reckoning.
On the façade, Alfredo Jaar’s A Logo for America, a landmark of Latin American conceptual art, appears on a monumental LED screen mounted above an Aztec monolith. Mexico’s leading experimental theatre collective, Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol, will animate the building each week with performances that extend the exhibition into the register of lived time. A new intervention by Ramón Saturnino will be presented inside the museum’s galleries, transforming them into a field of barriers that draw on the language of institutional censorship. Originally conceived for the courtyards, the work’s relocation underscores the exhibition’s engagement with the politics of visibility and restriction.
Alongside these interventions, the exhibition incorporates key international voices such as Marlene Dumas, Lutz Bacher, and Dayanita Singh, whose works resonate with questions of vulnerability, intimacy, and refusal. Contributions from Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa and Juan Pablo Echeverri, two leading queer Latin American artists, deepen this conversation through their incisive explorations of identity and intimacy. Tamiji Kitagawa, the Japanese modernist, returns to Mexico for the first time in decades, reconnecting with a geography that shaped his artistic trajectory. Meanwhile, Thomas Mukarobgwa, a pioneering figure from Zimbabwe, is being foregrounded internationally for the first time since his work was championed by Alfred Barr and Tristan Tzara. Together, these artists underscore the exhibition’s commitment to reactivating overlooked and marginalized histories within global modernism and to positioning Mexico City as a critical site for their rearticulation.
Together, these works crystallize a vision of the exhibition not as a closed statement but as an unfolding script, written collectively and animated by friendship as much as by rejection. A companion publication extends this approach: structured as a script and incorporating new writing by leading Mexican authors, it functions as a literary backbone that recalls radio, theatre, and collective storytelling.
The Museo de la Ciudad de México, housed in the eighteenth-century palace of the Count of Santiago de Calimaya, is itself central to this narrative. Once a beacon for international exhibitions, the museum has in recent years been left in disrepair, its programming eroded by bureaucracy and years of cultural neglect under previous administrations. Columna Rota thus arrives not only as an exhibition but as an act of resurrection. Entirely funded by civil society, it insists on culture as an autonomous force, independent of state neglect and institutional complicity. “The museum is literally in ruins,” Berzunza observes, “and this project is about bringing it back to life.”
By gathering nearly two hundred artists, writers, and performers in a single gesture, Columna Rota reimagines the possibilities of the group exhibition and repositions Mexico City as a cultural capital where global art history, cultural dialogue, and local urgency meet. Its scale, its independence, and its insistence on collectivity mark it as one of the most consequential exhibitions staged in Mexico in recent years, a reminder that rejection, however wounding, can also be the ground upon which new solidarities are built.
The Museum of Mexico City is overseen by the Secretaría de Cultura de la Ciudad de México. In this context, Columna Rota is an independent initiative that contributes to the museum’s programming and to the Secretariat’s efforts, while drawing on resources that extend beyond official channels. Throughout its history, the museum has hosted exhibitions of international relevance: Five Continents, One City, curated by Okwui Enwezor which aspired to become a recurring biennial; a retrospective of Pierre Soulages in 2010 that traveled from the Centre Pompidou; and Critical Fetishes: Residues of the General Economy, curated by Cuauhtémoc Medina, Marina Botey, and Helena Chávez MacGregor (2011–12).
Participating Artists
Arrogante Albino (MX)
Claudia Andujar (Brazil)
Siah Armajani (Iran)
Lutz Bacher (US)
José Eduardo Barajas (MX)
Lola Álvarez Bravo with Raul Abarca, Diva O. Foscade, Raúl Conde and Guillermina Álvarez (MX)
Soumya Sankar Bose (India)
Iñaki Bonillas (MX)
Victoria Clay Mendoza (MX – Philippines)
Phil Collins (UK)
June Crespo (Spain)
Jabulani Dhlamini (South Africa)
Marlene Dumas (South Africa)
Juan Pablo Echeverri (Colombia)
Francisco de Guerrero y Torres (New Spain, now MX)
Shilpa Gupta (India)
Juan Guzmán (MX)
Onyeka Igwe (Nigeria)
Alfredo Jaar (Chile)
Sosa Joseph (India)
Frida Kahlo (MX)
Tamiji Kitagawa (Japan)
Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol (MX)
Zein Majali (Jordan)
Teresa Margolles (MX)
Georgina Maxim (Zimbabwe)
Steve McQueen (UK)
Erbossyn Meldibekov (Kazakhstan)
Tina Modotti (USA–MX)
Jou Morales (MX)
Thomas Mukarobgwa (Zimbabwe)
Jonathan Okoronkwo (Nigeria)
Berenice Olmedo (MX)
José Clemente Orozco (MX)
Máximo Pacheco (MX)
Peet Pienaar (South Africa) in collaboration with Emilio Rivera, Laura Hernández Licona, Bibiana Hernández Licona, Oralia Hernández Licona, Darlene Tranquilino Hernández, Yolotzin Giselle Rodríguez Hernández, Suzette Hernández Hernández, Eulalia Pérez García, Mileidy Patricio Pérez, Cirila Madariaga, Priscila Iturbide, Mauro García, and Maestra María de los Ángeles Licona San Juan (MX)
Arlette Quỳnh-Anh Trần (Vietnam)
Jo Ractliffe (South Africa)
Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa (Guatemala)
Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook (Thailand)
José Rojas (MX)
Maruch Sántiz (MX)
Ramón Saturnino (MX)
Asim Abu Shakra (Palestine)
Dayanita Singh (India)
Slavs and Tatars (Eurasia)
Wi Taepa (New Zealand)
Deng Tai (China)
José María Velasco (MX)
Nahum B. Zenil (MX)
Madame Zo (Madagascar)
& more to be announced.
Press release from Museo de la Ciudad de México
Image: Teresa Margolles. In the Air. 2003/2025. Photography by Jose Ignacio Gonzalez. Image courtesy of the artist
