Exhibitions

AztLÁn opens a new horizon for Chicano art at the Fine Arts Museum

bonart mexico city - 03/08/26

The Palace of Fine Arts Museum is hosting its first major exhibition dedicated to Chicano art with AztLÁn, Tunnel of Time , a project conceived specifically for this institution after nearly three years of work. The exhibition establishes a dialogue between Mexico and the United States through a selection of more than seventy works that reflect the richness and complexity of an artistic tradition that has played a fundamental role in the construction of cultural identities on both sides of the border.

Curated by Rubén Ortiz-Torres and Jesse Lerner, the exhibition moves away from any linear or exclusively historical interpretation to propose a critical approach to the Chicano universe. Its narrative explores how memory, migration, community experience, and cultural identity are constantly transforming, turning the past into an open territory where archives, myth, imagination, and speculation about possible futures coexist.

Far from understanding Chicano art solely as an identity-based expression, AztLÁn, Tunnel of Time asserts its political dimension and its capacity to challenge official narratives of art history. The exhibition presents the work of more than thirty artists and various collectives primarily linked to the Los Angeles scene, creating a diverse panorama that highlights the hybrid, borderland, and profoundly experimental nature of these practices.

The exhibition is structured around four main themes— East Side Stories , Varrio , Demuralisms , and Transtemporalities —which bring together painting, photography, installations, historical documents, audiovisual pieces, and archival works. This diversity of artistic languages creates a visually dense montage that avoids offering a narrow view of the Chicano phenomenon and instead opts for an experience built from multiple voices, tensions, and resonances.

Among the works created specifically for the occasion, the mural "The Beyond," created by the 3B Collective for the museum, stands out. In it, the image of a tire engulfed in flames streaks across an intense blue background like a meteorite. The exhibition also includes historical pieces by key figures of the movement, among them an early stencil by Chaz Bojorquez from the late 1960s, considered one of the pioneers of Chicano graffiti.

The arrival of AztLÁn, Tunnel of Time at the Palace of Fine Arts marks a milestone for the Mexican institution, renowned for housing the great murals of Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and José Clemente Orozco. In this context, the exhibition expands the narrative of muralism and Mexican-rooted artistic practices, incorporating the experiences developed by Chicano communities in the United States as an essential part of the continent's contemporary visual history.

The exhibition will be open until August 26, establishing itself as an exceptional opportunity to approach an artistic production that, for decades, has remained insufficiently represented in major museums despite its enormous cultural and political influence.