Three years after its foundation, La Clínica has positioned itself as one of the main spaces in the state of Oaxaca, which stands out for the quality and quantity of exhibitions, performances, sound samples, residencies and workshops carried out by national and foreign artists, with a committed approach to multiple social and public causes, such as the defense of indigenous communities, the preservation of the environment and the promotion of feminism. “Sustaining a space like this is a great sacrifice and implies great respect for your artistic vocation, your person and your identity: who you are.
In the artistic field it meant a great responsibility, because Oaxaca is an entity that is measured in another historical line compared to the rest of the country, and it is thanks to the studies and cultural intersections that in some way give a real appearance, far from the appropriations of the industry and colonial thought,” its artistic director, Ramón Jiménez Cuen, known as Rame Cuen, explained in an interview with La Jornada. Previously, this space was the Santo Domingo de Guzmán clinic, founded on September 27, 1982 by a group of doctors, including the oncologist and professor Ramón Jiménez Caballero, father of Jiménez Cuen, who treated the population of the capital and other regions. from Oaxaca.
This care ended during the covid-19 pandemic due to the retirement or death of the specialists, and he recovered the space for artistic purposes, in tribute to the doctors, his father and his mother, María Cuen Higuera. Despite the radical change, people, especially older adults, still knock on the door at 808 Macedonio Alcalá Street, looking for medical attention. No “look, how cute!” Rame Cuen, founding member of the Belber Jiménez museum and former director of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Oaxaca, has the contribution of curator Ramón Jiménez Cárdenas, his son, and anthropologist Alejandra Ariel Gómez to consolidate each project through research and analysis.
This year, the Clinic hosted Atelier: Sculpture as a means of exploration, by Karian Amaya, Lorena Ancona, Paula Cortázar, Cynthia Gutiérrez and Perla Krauze, and I will never return here, by Javier Santos; the sound projects Listen to the fabric of time, by Nahú Rodríguez, and Relojes defutura, by Daniel Llermal, Jacobo Guerrero and Fernando Barrios, as well as the photographic exhibition Power, by Isabelle Hucht, Alexander Roschke and Jorge Sánchez di Bello, among others.
“We love to invite these cultural agents and present to them some social or human problem, and from that give them freedom of vision, with their glasses, to see what is happening in Oaxaca, Mexico or the world, and generate narrative from certain objects created by the same artists, who can be local, from any other part of the country or even from abroad, such as America, Europe, Asia or Africa, and this is what we already work on,” explained Jiménez, who was also a student of the photographer. Antonio Turok.
He specified that “all these activities have a very particular focus, which is a social mechanism, because everything evolves and changes quickly. We believe that if we do not mesh in this way, we run the great risk of becoming the vocabulary of gentrification, another commodity of the city, in the vocabulary of these gentrification processes that other proposals make.”
When highlighting the curatorial work, Alejandra Ariel indicated that, as an anthropologist, she applies research in the curatorial processes that allows her to “get to know the artist beyond the piece,” so “this information is made visible to cultivate the spectators and not They fall into the idea that art is: ‘Look, how nice, I’m going to hang a painting.’ This forces us not to close ourselves off, to be open and to continue creating new perspectives of our environments and dialogues with other creators so as not to remain pigeonholed,” he said.
