Mexico City à rebours: Fictions from an Art Scene
With ASMA, Elsa-Louise Manceaux, Omar Castillo Alfaro and Marek Wolfryd. Moderation: Anaïs Lepage
À rebours (Against Nature) refers to the 1884 novel by Decadent writer Joris-Karl Huysmans, an aesthetic meandering through a world in decline and transformation, favoring art and artifice over nature. The expression also suggests a departure from convention, defying prevailing expectations and, quite literally, going against the grain of a fabric. The duo ASMA, Elsa-Louise Manceaux and Omar Castillo Alfaro share an interest in history as a fiction to be questioned, subverted and reinvented. Dreaming of and romanticizing the past—particularly European representations, objects and architecture—as critical and speculative tools runs through ASMA’s sculptures. For Elsa-Louise Mance
aux, painting is an affective interface, an anachronistic crystallization of relationships and sensations. Based in Paris, Omar Castillo Alfaro is learning ancestral craft techniques to create futuristic installations. For Marek Wolfryd, the aesthetics of globalized production and consumption offer a lens through which to examine the shifting fictions of economic and cultural power. Together, they generate new hybrid myths in which mutation coexists with nostalgia. Their practices challenge inherited narratives and expose the historical, cultural, and economic fictions that shape contemporary imaginaries.
ASMA is an artist duo formed by Matias Armendaris (b. 1990, Ecuador) and Hanya Beliá (b. 1994, Mexico), based in Mexico City. Their work uses allegorical figures and evocative architectural spaces to explore formal interrelations between painterly and sculptural expressions. Through fictional narratives, they weave forms of nature with contemporary psychoaffective landscapes. Their collaborative practice produces hybrid and polluted forms, both materially and conceptually. Revisiting a nostalgic past through a metamodern lens, their work oscillates between critical discourses of identity and belonging and ornate formal explorations of beauty. Their work has been exhibited at institutions including Museo Tamayo, Museo de Arte de Zapopan, SculptureCenter, Denver Art Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit.
Omar Castillo Alfaro (b. 1991, Mexico) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice is rooted in the artisanal traditions passed down through his family. Through immersive installations, he breathes new life into the mythologies embodied in techniques originating in pre-Hispanic and colonial times, exploring nonlinear forms of storytelling. His work has been exhibited at institutions including the Centre Pompidou, Centre Pompidou-Metz, Museo Morelense de Arte Contemporáneo, and Fonderie Darling. His performances have been presented at the Museo Reina Sofía, Gaîté Lyrique, and Centre Pompidou. He has collaborated with the Musée du quai Branly, Museo de América, the British Museum, and the Louvre.
Elsa-Louise Manceaux (b. 1985, Paris) is an artist based in Mexico City. Her practice transforms painting from a strictly visual field into a mediated interface for affective dialogues, rerouting its history toward alternative modes of use and communication. Exploring the relationships between body and mind, history and imagination, and language and sensibility, she constructs anachronistic narratives through diverse techniques and technologies, extending her practice into installation and performative events. Her work has been exhibited at institutions including Museo Jumex, Museo Experimental El Eco, Museo Cabañas, Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, and Museo Amparo.
Marek Wolfryd (b. 1989, Mexico City) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice explores the intersections of culture, economics, and global power. Working across painting, sculpture, installation, and site-specific interventions, he investigates how global trade, financial networks, and shifting geopolitical structures shape contemporary visual culture. Through appropriated imagery, industrial materials, and conceptual strategies, his work reveals the often-overlooked cultural dimensions of production and consumption, examining the relationships between origin and copy, authenticity and reproduction. His work has been exhibited at institutions including Museo Jumex, Museo de la Cancillería, and Museo Raúl Anguiano, and is held in collections including MUAC, Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, and Colección Jumex.
Anaïs Lepage is a curator, writer and art historian based between Mexico and France. Her research explores the intersections of art, affects and literature; feminist and queer histories; and the politics of artificiality. She is particularly drawn to time-based practices. Since 2023, she has directed the Institutional Program & Conversations at Material Art Fair and Salón Acmé in Mexico City. Previously, she held curatorial and programming positions at 49 Nord 6 Est – Frac Lorraine, Casa del Lago UNAM, the Louis Vuitton Foundation, the Museum of Modern Art of Paris, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chengdu. Her recent projects include the exhibition Una obsesión por las flores, a dialogue between Marcel Proust and Mario Bellatin at LagoAlgo; Kris Lemsalu’s performance The Snail Pace at Frac Lorraine; and the symposium Affective Constellations at Museo Tamayo. Through encounters and friendships, she has developed a deep interest in the art scenes of the Americas, Spain and France.
Omar Castillo Alfaro, Sailor Moon, 2023,
Natural bird feathers, cotton paper, metal and wood, 180 x 80 x 30 cm.
Frac Poitou-Charentes collection, Angoulême, France.
Photos courtesy of the artist