MEXICO CITY.- Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil is presenting Fuego amigo (Friendly fire), Pia Camil's first survey exhibition at a Mexican institution. Fuego amigo presents work from 2001 to the present, and showcases over 48 works in various media from drawing and sculpture to installation and performance.
As curator Mauricio Marcin states: "Fuego amigo proposes a circular revision without a beginning. The main structure is held together by the remains of her studio's fire emulating the alchemic practice of lead transforming into gold. Prior to installation, the museum gallery was being renovated and the 'bare' plywood walls appeared behind the white walls. It was then decided to stop the remodeling and reveal what lies beneath, exposing the process of transformation. The work therefore is showcased on bare walls and self-standing modules made from repurposed and burnt wood.
Camil's work emerges from practicing forms of commerce beyond the logic of capitalism. This process is nourished by the observation of the social and economic failure of the neo-colonial model, instrumentalized by trade agreements and the rage of the free market. Camil is inspired by heterogeneous peri-capitalist models that surface from necessity and precariousness. She locates and exposes them, without romanticism, to denounce the horrors and to postulate other possibilities that communities have found. Thus, she practices an urban anthropology.
A few years ago, Camil and her family relocated from Mexico City to a semi-rural community in Mexico to seek another way of life, or at least, a daily life that moves away from the discourses, rules, and productive schedules that capitalism imposes and embodies in every megalopolis."
The first monograph dedicated to the practice of Mexican artist Pia Camil, Friendly Fires combines exhibition documentation with material from the artist's personal archive to explore thirty-two projects from 2006 to now.
Camil's work is often realized within a climate where kinship and the affective are proposed as a radical kind of collaboration in stark contrast to the era's muscular individualism. This book, published by Inventory Press and designed in collaboration with Sofia Broid, includes texts by Elise Lammer, Justine Ludwig, Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, and Karen Cordero, and an experimental visual text by Gabriela Jauregui. The monograph thus becomes an expansive space sustained by the artist and her community—one that explores the capitalist critique in her practice, the material significance of cloth in her work, and the importance of collective practices in a multispecies world.
Camil has a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI and an MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art, London, UK. Her work has been exhibited internationally, with recent solo museum exhibitions including Three Works, MOCA Tucson, Tucson, AZ (2021); Velo Revelo, Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA (2020); Fade into Black, Queens Museum, Queens, NY (2019); Bara, Bara, Bara, Tramway, Glasgow, Scotland (2019); Telón de boca, Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City, Mexico (2018); Split Wall, Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, UK (2018); Fade into Black, SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA (2018); Bara, Bara, Bara, Dallas Contemporary, Dallas, TX (2017); A Pot for a Latch, New Museum, New York (2016); Skins, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH (2015); and Cuadrado Negro, Basque Museum-Centre of Contemporary Art, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Araba, Spain (2013).
Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City, Mexico
Pia Camil: Fuego amigo
February 10–April 14, 2024
