In Susana GO's living room, the hammering is heard coming from the next room.
The parquet floors, on the other side, are covered in plastic while a worker and an artist set up the exhibition that she will open the next day.
Susana GO divided her house almost a decade ago so that her studio and an exhibition space that she called Estudio Marte would also fit there;
she inaugurated it on the first floor of a worn brick building in the Santa María la Ribera neighborhood, in the north of Mexico City.
This neighborhood and the San Rafael, a few blocks away, began to welcome creators, gallery owners and curators years ago;
Today, in that area, art bustles.
Santa María and San Rafael form a rectangle to the north of Paseo de la Reforma.
They are 15 blocks long by 10 wide that can be crossed on foot, from one end to the other, in just over half an hour.
Today there are international galleries there, such as Hilario Galguera, which opened in the mid-nineties and settled permanently in 2006, or studios of established artists, such as Bosco Sodi.
But there are, above all, workshops for emerging artists and creators with medium-sized careers;
independent spaces, such as the El Palmar or Acapulco 62 galleries, and self-managed initiatives, such as Espacio Toloache, a small store that opened five months ago in a shopping mall and sells the work of artists “who are just starting out” without charging commission.
There is also an ecosystem of museums, such as El Chopo or El Eco, conceived by Mathias Goeritz;
Adrián Barona, founder of Espacio Toloache. Nayeli Cruz
But it has not always been so.
There was a time, recalls Susana GO (Mexico City, 44 years old), when she did not feel the same effervescence.
The artist and curator tells that once, not so long ago, she and her colleagues wanted to do a show with artists linked to the neighborhood in Santa María and there was nowhere.
It was 2015 and in the end they set up the exhibition in a house that was lent to them in another area.
“Nobody had a space, there were no galleries, there were no projects, there was nothing,” she says.
In the living room of her house -workshop-exhibition room, the light enters filtered through the translucent sheet metal on the ceiling.
When she opened Estudio Marte, she proposed to repeat the show and gathered 33 artists there.
Years before, Hilario Galguera had already settled in San Rafael.
Its founders, Hilario Galguera and Rosa María Ortega, opened it for the first time in the nineties in the same house where it is now.
They closed it and reopened it in 2006 with an exhibition of the British artist Damien Hirst.
“It was a success and obviously there were possibilities to move the gallery to any other location.
I remember that some people told me to go to Polanco.
I was not interested ”, says Galguera by videoconference from London.
Today the gallery represents national and international artists and has also been operating in Madrid since last year.
Galguera (Mexico City, 66 years old) is recognized as one of the first to arrive: "It has been a very gradual thing, it has not been an explosive thing."
One of the last to open his studio in the area has been Bosco Sodi, one of the Mexican artists with the most international projection.
His space, designed by the architect Alberto Kalach, is technically located in the Atlampa neighborhood, a few meters from the border with Santa María.
Galguera believes that the presence of artists in these neighborhoods "contributes to improving the state of things."
"Especially at this time when the State has dynamited the cultural infrastructure," he says.
A work by the French artist Daniel Buren in the Hilario Galguera gallery. Iñaki Malvido
Where things are-happening
The Government of the capital identifies twenty of these spaces in that part of the city.
From this figure we must subtract those that have already closed and add those that do not yet appear:
underground
spaces that go unnoticed in the records;
pop-ups
that are put together for specific exhibitions and then disappear or hybrid initiatives, such as cafeterias that lend rooms for exhibitions –Café don Porfirio–;
printers that share their warehouse with curators –ZClub–;
or stations that promote the work of artists –Radio Nopal–.
That movement and that diversity create the feeling that things are-happening-there.
Ileana Magoda (Mexico City, 37 years old), who began painting less than three years ago, lives surrounded by other artists in San Rafael.
She lives with her husband, Alexander Grawoig –musician and also a painter–, a silent three-story house at the end of a private one.
There she has her studio, where canvases now hang with spines that curl around themselves in pastel colors.
On the same street, more creators reside.
One day, one of her neighbors, who owns a cafeteria, saw her painting in her studio and invited her to exhibit her work there.
“It feels community,” she says.
The artist Ileana Magoda in her studio in the San Rafael neighborhood. Nayeli Cruz
Outside the private sector, the dynamic is similar: “The ones from Radio Nopal are my friends;
they began to open the space to hold exhibitions and promote artists.
Everyone on the street knows El Palmar, which has studios and a gallery;
the owner, who is an artist, goes out to have his coffee and talks about the place.
Next door is a print shop and gallery.
They did tours with a restaurant that was here on the corner.”
Although she did not move there to be among artists, it happened.
Two central neighborhoods and still "accessible"
The anthropologist José Ignacio Lanzagorta identifies the moment in which these two colonies began to receive artists some 20 years ago.
His arrival occurred "almost simultaneously" in both and represented a "gentrifying advance".
“You see the same exploratory tendency of the middle classes with cultural capital to find a place in the center of the city,” says the anthropologist.
It is a trend that is repeated, with its variants, in different capitals: “Why do we want to return to the center of the cities?
Because there are things.
There is the subway, the streets are prettier, there are trees, the architecture is more interesting…”
The artists, gallery owners and curators with whom EL PAÍS spoke for this report – a dozen – agree that these two neighborhoods are attractive for two main reasons: the proximity to the city center, where many of the materials they need are obtained and where there is a good transport infrastructure, and the prices are still "accessible" for spacious homes.
Lanzagorta adds that there is a "nostalgic story", especially about Santa María.
“An imaginary is built that says that if you have a certain artistic, historical or cultural sensitivity you have to be there”, he explains.
Santa Maria la Ribera and San Rafael
“Where the artists are, it is much easier to weave networks,” says Cynthia Yee (Chihuahua, 41 years old).
She had her studio near the Azteca Stadium, to the south, in the Coyoacán mayor's office, and moved to San Rafael 15 years ago.
“It was very difficult to get people there, and now it's very casual here,” she says.
“I think that word is already spreading.
As before it was the Countess, now the Santa María and San Rafael are a reference”, says the artist, who continues: “The Countess was what was
cool
when I started studying, but the independent spaces are no longer there because of the expensive rents and because a halo is simply undone”.
Some of the renowned galleries, however, are still in neighborhoods such as Roma –OMR or Travesía Cuatro–, San Miguel Chapultepec –Kurimanzutto– or Polanco –Proyectos Monclova–.
Buyers too, agree some of the interviewees.
In 2021, the Material pop-up art fair, held every year during Art Week in Mexico City, moved to the Atlampa neighborhood, just a few steps from Santa María la Ribera.
Some of the spaces that work in this area were included in the program, but they assure that they hardly received any views.
This year Material returned to the other side of Paseo de la Reforma.
Cynthia Yee, visual artist, in her studio in the San Rafael neighborhood. Aggi Garduño
Lanzagorta warns that "gentrification is still missing" and that "today it is easier" for it to happen in San Rafael than in Santa María.
One of the reasons, he says, is the large presence of popular housing in the second.
The anthropologist explains that, although both colonies are usually seen as "a package", each one started from "differentiated urban projects" and followed their own trajectories.
“All the central neighborhoods of Mexico City lose density in the 20th century.
The big difference is that while San Rafael never ceases to be an active neighborhood – it is a theater area and the heart of union activity – Santa María loses activity and is no longer a central neighborhood;
Just now it is taking flight again ”, he points out.
In 15 years, Yee has seen rental prices rise to displace even some of her colleagues.
By her calculations, the house she now rents and which she also uses as a workshop—a minimalist penthouse with iron windows, a fireplace, and terraces overlooking a church dome—would have cost half as much 10 years ago.
The artist is aware of how gentrification processes occur.
"It's not our fault that we exist, but we do have a responsibility to the environment," she acknowledges.
“It is still a big question.
Having information and being aware of the role you are playing is a good starting point”, she says, adding: “Producing anywhere is political”.
Less art, more fun
In this ecosystem that has been forming there is a particularly unique space on the third floor of a high school.
Marcos González, known in the media as
Foreman
(Mexico City, 32 years old), arrived there in 2015.
The classrooms on the top floor of the school were empty of students and full of chairs.
Foreman set up his studio in one of those rooms and was relatively alone until 2019, when more artists began to arrive.
The artists Taka Fernández and Foreman together with the owner of the school, Martín Villa. Rodrigo Oropeza
“The idea was always to do compass projects.
There are no contracts and super serious things, but it is a trusted band, from different generations and disciplines”, says Foreman.
The owner of the school, Martín Villa, assures that the presence of the artists allowed the institution, which has been in the neighborhood for more than 50 years, "not to thunder" during the pandemic.
In total, there are about twenty creators and each one pays rents ranging from 3,000 to 5,000 pesos.
“Students are not allowed to go upstairs unless there is some activity going on,” says Villa, who has seen how student interest in art and design has grown in recent years.
Francisco
Taka
Fernández (Mexico City, 56 years old), who in addition to being an artist is a neighbor of the neighborhood, opened his studio there after Foreman introduced him to space.
The two had met at the exhibition that was organized in Espacio Marte with artists from the neighborhood, the one that cost so much to put together because there was nowhere.
"I saw the entire transformation of Santa María," says the artist, who has just returned from exhibiting at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona.
He has also seen the transformation of the scene in general: “There is more openness and more opportunities.
Before you had to follow a more or less established route of galleries and houses of culture, and now you don't.
Now you can exhibit at home”.
Foreman and Taka Fernández talk in the second's workshop, one on a chair and the other on a bench so low that his bent knees touch his chest.
They have put a coffee pot and Fernández lights a cigarette.
On the other side of the hall, where Foreman's workshop is, the noises of a nearby construction site can be heard.
“Tac-tac-tac-tac”, imitates the artist, and tells: “That used to happen to us before.
They are going to make a television and film studio.”
He, he says, arrived "looking for a way to do something different outside of the galleries" and suddenly found himself "in the hot zone of art."
“It's a fun phenomenon, but you also have to take it in and take care of it and keep it for the band,” he says.
On the wall he painted a neon reminder: "Too much art, not much fun."
Taka Fernández in front of one of his works. Rodrigo Oropeza
Foreman's studio at the "Mártires de Tlatelolco" Popular High School. Rodrigo Oropeza
Foreman in front of the sign that says "Much art, little fun". Rodrigo Oropeza
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