Mexican artist, curator, and architectural researcher.
His work uses architectural history, drawing, sculpture, writing and video to address representations of indigeneity in architectural modernity and contemporary politics, the production of extreme environments, and social transformation in the Americas. He has been a fellow of the Society of Architectural Historians and a grantee of the New Artists Society at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Jumex Foundation for Contemporary Art, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and DCASE. His work has been shown in venues as DePaul Art Museum, Fundación Andreani for BienalSur, Ca’ Foscari Zattere for the 16th Venice Architecture Biennial, Harun Farocki Institut, Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Uri-Eichen Gallery, Chicago Design Museum, Extase, SITE Galleries, SpaceP11 and Centro de Arte y Filosofia. His work is part of private and institutional collections in Mexico and Latinamerica. He has been a guest speaker for institutions like MoMA’s Emilio Ambasz Institute x DocTalks, the American Institute of Architects, the Society of Architectural Historians, Smart Museum of Art, Materia Abierta, UPenn, and CENTRO.
He is currently the curator of The Last of Animal Builders, an exhibition at Mies van der Rohe’s Edith Farnsworth House.
He manages the Katz Center for Mexican Studies at The University of Chicago.
UPCOMING:
Agosto 18, 2023 at Materia Abierta, CDMX
Sep 7, 2023 - DePaul Art Museum, Chicago
Sep 8, 2023 - URI-Eichen Gallery, Chicago
ARTIFICIAL-AGENCY
Architecture
Exhibition Strategy
Research and Publication
Design Consultancy
Previous clients and collaborators include, Art Institute of Chicago, Singapore Art Museum, Edith Farnsworth House, Goethe-Institut Chicago, Michael Rakowitz Studio, Black Athena Collective, Dawit L. Petros, The University of Chicago, among others.
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Agua Muy Vieja Del Lugar Espantoso
At Rhona Hoffman Gallery in Chicago
As part of Gentle Content, a group show curated by Julia Birka-White
“Alberto Ortega Trejo’s contributions to Gentle Content were
prompted by recent news events that illuminate class struggles — specifically in his home country of Mexico — in addition to his research regarding Indigenous Mexican cosmologies. When
creating these new objects, Ortega Trejo considered the deadly 2019
explosion in Tlahuelilpan, Mexico of a pipeline owned by Pemex,
the state oil company. The illegal extraction, possession, and sales
of thefted fuel has been a long standing issue in the country, the
result of larger class and economic disparities affecting sites of
mineral extraction and oil processing as is the case of Tlahuelilpan,
an Otomí territory. Ortega Trejo’s metal figurative cut-outs adhere
to the wall, and similar to Bredar’s painted suspended heads are disjointed and cut off from their whole. Discernable is an
amputated leg referencing the overcirculation of violent image in contemporary Mexico while engaging with Otomí God-making
practices. Next to it, a nebulous form that is actually an alcohol
sack, hovers among other silhouettes. The alcohol sacks the artist
is referencing are used for pulque (a traditional Mexican alcoholic
drink of fermented agave nectar) storage and typify the effect of alcoholism on colonized Indigenous communities globally.
Additionally, six charcoal on sandpaper drawings mounted on
metal plates and organized in a grid unite to form an atlas bone.
Interested in bones and the practice of their display in sacred and
communal spaces in Central Mexico as well as in their political and
forensic register, Ortega Trejo’s precise drawing could be read as a
warning or a sign of perpetuation and regeneration.”
Julia Birka- White, Director of Rhona Hoffman Gallery
Julia Birka- White, Director of Rhona Hoffman Gallery
