I Know You'll Remember: A Portrait Journey of Self-Reflection
"How long does this take?" asks a lady in a radiant orange jacket, pointing at the bus. "Who knows, señora, this kind of journey may last a lifetime," I reply. She looks at me in silence, taken aback by the unexpected existentialism of my answer, wondering if I'm being ironic. I'm dead serious. The bus doesn’t have to move for this journey to start. What happens is you get inside and find yourself under the watchful gaze of myriad faces —as when you enter a crowded public transport in the middle of day. However, these passengers are different. Their faces are painted with ink on cement; woven into traditional Oaxacan textiles; engraved in glass; captured in 35mm photography, oil painting, watercolor, drawing, and embroidery. Some of them fix their gaze directly on you, alternating between a calming demeanor and a disquieting intensity; others rest with eyes closed, as if sleeping or deceased.
José Luis Cuevas
Title:
Untitled. From the series 'New era'.
2009-14
Technical specifications:
Portfolio print on Hahnemule baryta paper
Sizes:
45x30cm / 150x100 cm
Price:
$ 34,000 MXN / $ 100,000 MXN
The front seats are empty of passengers, with mirrors above them, turning the seated visitor into the first "portrait" in the row of faces that seems endless. In this conceptual twist, the observer turns into an object observed by the artworks.
The sound installation, comprised of monologues and stories recorded by the show’s participants played simultaneously from radios attached to the portraits, amplifies the sensation of a crowded bus, replicating the textured soundscape of public transportation: fragments of conversations or thoughts suddenly becoming audible. Amidst this, a male voice belts out: "¡Yo sé que teeeee acordaraaaaaaaas!" — "I know you'll remember." We know you will.
"I Know You’ll Remember" is a conceptual sequel to culto colecta’s debut show, "Endémica," inviting visitors to reconnect with themselves through art. "Endémica" challenged artists to contemplate nature from anti-anthropocentric viewpoints, positioning humans on par with other entities or even excluding them entirely. For "I Know You’ll Remember," we transformed a vintage 1970s Mexican bus into an immersive exhibition space, titling it after an inscription we found inside: “Yo sé que te acordarás” — “I Know You’ll Remember.” This unique vehicle acts as a time capsule, transporting spectators into a liminal corridor of memories, both their own and those of others.
Diana Padilla Ríos
Title:
Herminia R. 25 years
2021
Technical specifications:
Acrylic on canvas
Size:
50x60 cm
Price:
SOLD
This awkward intimacy inherent in portraiture may be one reason why the genre is not popular in contemporary art. Historically, portraits were often commissioned by the wealthy to immortalize themselves or their family members, serving as visual records and symbols of status. In today's context, people are often hesitant to display the faces of strangers in their homes. However, this unsettling familiarity of the portrait embodies the figure of the other, confronting and challenging the viewer in an ambiguous form of artwork. Portraiture offers the emotional vulnerability of a personal conversation: like people, each portrait has an untold story behind it. One simply has to learn to listen.
The narratives are shaped from different perspectives on the portrait by eight curators: Amado Cabrales, Tonatiuh López, Andrea Bustillos, Isabel Deheza, Kristell Henry, Laos Salazar, Verana Codina, and Andronik Khachiian.
Cabrales curated five conceptual duos of artworks, linking them through the notion of an identity in flux: Michele Lorusso and Angela Leyva, Scott Galvan and Andrea Villalon, Alex Cabrera and Michelle Sitton, Yvonne Venegas and Paola López Pedroza, José Luis Cuevas and Nahum B. Zenil. By pairing portraits of artists from different disciplines and generations, Cabrales explores the genre's potential as a tool for experimenting with self-image, continuously deforming and reconstructing the concepts of "self" and "other". For example, the Lorusso/Leyva duo illustrates the dynamic relationship between self-reflection and the disappearance of the self-image. Angela Leyva’s twins, with their eerily blurred facial features portrayed in the paintings "SA-I" and "SA-II", are juxtaposed with Michele Lorusso’s mirror diptych "La Fragilidad del Tiempo Yo". Despite their distinct forms, both works evoke a sense of fragility and transformation, oscillating between erasure and reflection.
Angela Leyva
Title: “SA-I”, “SA-II”, 2023
Technical specifications: Óleo sobre lino
Size: 40x30cm
Price: $ 19,000 MXN
Michele Lorusso
Title: La Fragilidad del Tiempo Yo (díptico), 2024
Technical specifications: Espejo, aluminio
Size: 40x30x3 cm
Price: $ 60,500 MXN
Tonatiuh López selected works by Antonio Barrientos, Paulo Romero, Edgar Silva, Alejandro Galván, and Diana Rojas, also known as Santísima Kitsch. These portraits serve as emotional archives of past relationships or visual records of the artists themselves, while also providing critical observations of modern society in relation to politics, religion, and technology. Paulo Romero’s "Chuck" is a captivating painting reflecting the artist's exploration of how we perceive and present ourselves as images through digital devices.
Paulo Romero
Title:
Chuck
Technical specifications:
Acrylic on canvas
Size:
20x18 cm
2022
Price:
$ 11,600 MXN
Alejandro Galván's works “¿Cuántos ojos te han mirado a los ojos?" [How many eyes have looked into your eyes?] portray strangers whom the artist sketches during brief moments of shared intimacy in the metro. The use of cement as a base enhances the atmosphere of desolation typical of the outskirts of Mexico City, a recurring motif in Galván’s drawings.
Alejandro Galván
1. Title: From the series "How many eyes have looked you in the eye?", 2019.
Technical data: India ink on cement
Size: 20 x 25 cm
Price: $ 25,000 MXN
2. Title: From the series "How many eyes have looked into your eyes?", 2019
Technical details: India ink on cement
Size: 20 x 25 cm
Price: $ 25,000 MXN
The whimsical watercolor portraits of the Canadian artist Beth Frey were chosen by Andrea Bustillos. "Beth Frey's works are both perplexing and playful in equal measure," comments Bustillos. "By weaving together references from art history, cartoons, and contemporary visual culture—including social media and images generated through artificial intelligence—she transforms her characters into enigmatic and absurd figures, simultaneously evoking sensations of sensuality and unease. Contradiction and indeterminacy serve as fundamental elements in Frey's work; she explores the space between figuration and abstraction, as well as the intersection of meaning and absurdity, seamlessly blending painting and drawing.”
Beth Frey
Title:
A Flower Girl with a Nimbus of Red, 2022
Technical data:
Acuarela sobre papel
Size:
54 x 44 cm
Price:
$ 50,000 MXN
Beth Frey
Title:
Miss Plum and the Ghost of Pie, 2022
Technical data:
Acuarela sobre papel
Size:
54 x 44 cm
Price:
$ 50,000 MXN
Irony is what unites the creative approaches of Beth Frey and Adrian Gomez, a textile artist from Oaxaca, who immerses himself in portraying the everyday life of the outskirts and its inhabitants, a world he has known since childhood. Curator Isabel Deheza, who has selected his two works "Con la noche adentro" [Within the night] and "Un día soleado" [A sunny day], explains: “I admire his extensive experience and politically nuanced, open-minded, and critical ideas. I greatly appreciate the humorous and sarcastic approach he takes in addressing the harsh reality of the country, encompassing its dreams, violence, and playfulness. The knowledge that Adrian Gomez has accumulated regarding textiles is crucial for the preservation of tapestries in Mexico.”
Adrían Gomez
Title:
Con la noche adentro, 2016
Technical data:
Minitapiz tejido con lana teñida con tintes naturales; circa
Size:
20 x 18 cm
Price:
$ 17,000 MXN
Adrían Gomez
Title:
Un día soleado, 2020
Technical data:
Tapiz técnica mixta tejida con lana teñida con tintes naturales
Size:
72 x 42 cm
Price:
$ 42,000 MXN
Kristell Henry curated artworks by three female Mexican artists: Diana Padilla Ríos, Pilar Córdoba, and Paulina Zamora. In the captivating blue portrait "Heminia R. 25 años" [Heminia R., aged 25], Padilla Ríos references the historical foundations of psychiatric institutions in Mexico, revealing deep-seated classist and racist issues ingrained within society. Pilar Córdoba’s embroidery "Desde esa noche nadie supo más de mí" [Since that night, nobody heard from me again] is inspired by an illustration from an old book about first aid, capturing the silhouette of a man from behind to evoke the notion of vanishing. "Retrato contra la inmediatez [Portrait against Immediacy]," a 35mm film photograph by Paulina Zamora from the series "Frescos," depicts people interacting with various beings, exploring possibilities of establishing dialogues beyond the human realm, extending across species and time periods.
Pilar Córdoba
Title:
Since that night no one has heard from me, 2022
Technical data:
Cross stitch embroidery on marbleized fabric
Size:
30 x 32 cm
Price:
$ 25,000 MXN
Paulina Zamora
Title:
Portrait against immediacy
Technical data:
Half-tone silkscreen printing on 300g cloud parchment paper
Size:
50 x 70 cm
Price:
$ 12.800 MXN
Jorge León, whose works "Mother" and "Dildo Cactus" were selected by Laos Salazar to amplify queer voices in the exhibition, reveals that his relationship with portraiture has always been marked by the fear of forgetting, driven by an intention to immortalize moments shared with loved ones. The portrait of Jorge León's mother documents his intimate journey of liberation from learned beliefs, particularly her devout Catholicism, which he deeply respects. Meanwhile, "Dildo Cactus" portrays his friend Sebastián, serving as an exploration of nudity as a theme and a homage to the photography of Robert Mapplethorpe.
Jorge León
Title:
Dildo Cactus, 2019
Technical data:
35mm photographic digital printing
Size:
40 x 60 cm
Price:
$ 8,600 MXN
$ 500 USD
Jorge León
Title:
Mother, 2018
Technical data:
35mm photographic digital printing
Size:
40 x 60 cm
Price:
$ 8,600 MXN
$ 500 USD
Verana Codina chose unconventional portraits created by two artists, Raida and Natalia Berunza, who study together at the Esmeralda and share a studio. There is a silent correspondence in the materials and techniques used by both artists, which deviate from traditional portrait painting approaches. Natalia Berunza focuses on the process of repetition, consciously replicating each discovered stroke with an understanding that each attempt will yield different results. Raida, on the other hand, investigates the qualities of spray paint. Through blurry atmospheres and shadowy environments, the faces he presents can only be partially observed, allowing space for the viewer's imagination and interpretation.
Natalia Berzunza
Title:
El agua suavizará los campos para sembrar, 2023
Technical data:
Tierras y pigmentos naturales con recubrimiento acrílico
Size:
70 x 80 cm
Price:
$ 10,000 MXN
Raida
Title:
Untitled 8, 2023
Technical data:
Aerosol on canvas
Size:
30 x 40 cm
Price:
$ 10,000 MXN
On behalf of culto colecta, Andronik Khachiian curated several artists from the previous show—Munir Toral, Luis Campos, and Mónica Figueroa—and invited two new ones: Jonathan García Ayala and Josías Castorena. Surprisingly, all three artists from “Endémica” explored family themes in their works: Luís Campos presented a portrait titled “She is gone but she is everywhere… granny”; Munir Toral created an abstract portrait of his mother using a CT scan of her womb; while in the self-portrait “Estar lejos de Dios” [Being Far from God], Mónica Figueroa depicts herself sick in bed, intending to convey the guilt she felt for having distanced herself from her family.
Mónica Figueroa
Title:
Being far from God, 2016
Technical data:
Oil on cotton paper
Size:
70 x 70 cm
Price:
$ 25,000 MXN
The artwork "Asthma" by Jonathan García Ayala is part of his series on monstrosity, drawing from his childhood memories of having asthma and evoking the frightening sensation of oxygen deprivation. Less monstrous and more grotesque, Josías Castorena's self-portrait serves as an exploration of emotional vulnerability, seeking to strip away all idealized elements of pictorial representation. The anxiety about how he is perceived by himself and others, stemming from the concerns often accompanying dysmorphia, becomes the focal point of his self-critical scrutiny.
Josias Castorena
Title:
Untitled (Self portrait #8), 2020
Technical data:
Colored pencil on paper
Size:
23x33.5 cm
Price:
$ 7,000 MXN
Gathered together, these portraits weave a vibrant tapestry of personal experiences from artists who explore prevailing cultural narratives, examining various facets of identity — both individual and collective. While the physical journey has concluded, the artworks showcased in the exhibition are still accessible for purchase on our website. Find the portrait that speaks to you in our catalog.
