Nuevo León: The Future Is Unwritten, delved into the social complexities and contradictions of living in a 21st-century city, through contemporary photography.

Under the curatorship of Mauricio Maillé and Ariadna Ramonetti, the exhibition features 602 works by 10 photographers and a collective. The works are presented in the following order in the galleries of MARCO: Aristeo Jiménez, Yvonne Venegas, Oswaldo Ruíz, Alejandro Cartagena, the Estética Unisex collective (composed of Lorena Estrada and Futuro Moncada), Loreto Villarreal, Stefan Ruiz, Ruth Rodríguez, Salomé Fuentes, Sofía Ayarzagoitia, and Juan Rodrigo Llaguno. These artists have explored themes such as urban growth, labor culture, and the everyday lives of various social groups, among others.

Most of the artists are originally from Nuevo León or have addressed issues in their careers that concern and occur in the region. However, these issues are not exclusive to a single geographic point; rather, they are conditions shared with other localities across Latin America.

Aristeo Jimenez’s artwork is the core of the exhibition, as a tribute to his artistic career. The artist has dedicated himself to documenting the daily lives of socially vulnerable sectors and communities in Monterrey, such as peripheral housing, obscure nocturnal environments, and red-light districts.

Building on Jiménez’s work, the curators established connections between photographers who have focused on Nuevo León from diverse perspectives. In a form of visual dialogue, they selected five artists’ projects to include some historical photographs from the Fototeca Nuevo León collection, with the aim of creating a historical contrast.

Together, these artistic proposals, each with its unique perspective, form a panoramic, divergent, and kaleidoscopic vision of a complex city.

The production of the exhibition received special sponsorship from Banregio, a banking institution celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. Additionally, the company boasts a contemporary photography collection that has become one of the most important in northern Mexico.

An unknown photographer captures an image titled Monterrey de noche (Tempestad) / Monterrey at Night Thunderstorm. Center stage, a few urban lights form an emerging, growing city. In the upper part of the image, a powerful electric storm draws out the silhouette of the Cerro de la Silla, the mountainous range that gives Monterrey its identity.

The vital pulsion that lives in this image has led us to explore the implications of the photographic practice in the works of ten photographers and an Art Collective, who have based their visual examinations within the city of Monterrey and its outskirts.

The aim of this exhibition is to inquire, through contemporary photography, the complexities of living in a city like Monterrey, suggesting new perspectives to understand this contradictory city. The photographers present different perspectives, putting the social narrative of the Monterrey ethos — based on devotion to work, meritocracy and entrepreneurial spirit — into tension.

Eleven visual essays by Aristeo Jiménez, Yvonne Venegas, Oswaldo Ruiz, Alejandro Cartagena, Estética Unisex (Lorena Estrada and Futuro Moncada), Loreto Villarreal, Stefan Ruiz, Ruth Rodríguez, Salomé Fuentes, Sofía Ayarzagoitia and Juan Rodrigo Llaguno, construct a divergent social account and a radiography of the comings and goings of a complex, fragmented society.

Photography here functions as a social document that opens a proactive discussion and delves into the lines of research addressed by the selected artists.

The point of departure for this visual investigation is the work of Aristeo Jiménez, who throughout his career has documented the everyday life of the working-class sectors of Monterrey. His importance in photography and the little presence his work has had in museums in Mexico allows us to, for the first time, perform an in-depth revision of his work and of his most emblematic photographic series. Addressing his photographic practice from the social experience and his ability to interpret the environment allows us to establish curatorial guidelines and to configure the discursive lines that integrate the works of the other authors.

In addition to these eleven contemporary essays, a survey was conducted in the archives preserved by the Fototeca Nuevo León–Centro de las Artes that seeks to create a reflection on the ways of photographic representation throughout the history of this medium.

Nuevo León: The Future is Unwritten is a counter-hegemonic story of time and its disarrangement, about the difficulties of dwelling in uncertainty in a rural context. However, it is also a story of the agencies of those who have built this city from the ground up. Let this project serve as a homage to this other culture of work, to this other culture of effort and savings that thrives in the margins of time, violence and history; between the edges of the mountain and the river, and that lies hidden and resting amongst the official myths of the regiomontano businessman.

Mauricio Maillé and Ariadna Ramonetti Liceaga, Curators
Monterrey, Nuevo León, 2024