MARÍA SOSA & ROJONEGRO | CAPE TOWN ART FAIR 2024

María Sosa (Morelia, Michoacán, Mexico, 1985) graduated from the Universidad Michoacán de San Nicolas de Hidalgo. Sosa’s practice stems from her research about our shared colonial past and how it constitutes contemporary social dynamics as an epistemicide of prehispanic worlds, racism, sexism, and the invisibility of multiple non-westerner’s ways of life in the American continent. Sosa’s work is nourished by her research of prehispanic art, anthropology, the methodology of Ecología de Saberes and the exploration of production techniques of ritual prehispanic and contemporary objects.

María Sosa’s solo exhibitions include El otro lado de uno mismo at the Llano Gallery in Mexico City (MX), 2022; Centro Cultural La Ibérica Arte UNAM, Mérida, Yucatán (MX), 2022; Tepalcates de Sueños (with RojoNegro) in Mexico City (MX), 2022; Solo Show Zurich, ARTEBA, Buenos Aires (ARG), 2019; and El enemigo de adentro, el enemigo de afuera at Parque Galería, Mexico City (MX), 2019. Sosa’s selected international group exhibitions include Las estrellas me iluminan al revés at No Man’s Art Gallery, Amsterdam (NL), 2023; Deep Listening at the Laboratorio de Arte Alameda, Mexico City (MX), 2021–2022; Root and Rhizome at Casa de México Foundation, Madrid (ES), 2021; The Brain Mixologists at A Tale of A Tub, Amsterdam (NL), 2021; Ch'xi: One that is two at Arewá, Madrid (ES), 2021; Amexica at the Servais Family Collection, Brussels (BE), 2020; La Désse Verte at Lasécu Artothèque, Lille (FR), 2019.

RojoNegro is an artist duo consisting of María Sosa (Michoacán, Mexico, 1985) and Noé Martínez (Michoacán, Mexico, 1986). RojoNegro’s video work revolves around the performance of rituals in which bodily movement enters into dialogue with the historical energies of colonial documents and activates material elements, such as tobacco, as a means for spiritual communication and healing.

RojoNegro’s recent exhibition projects include Las estrellas me iluminan al revés at No Man’s Art Gallery, Amsterdam (NL), 2023; Tepalcates de Sueños, commissioned by the Swiss Institute of New York in Mexico City (MX), 2022; El encuentro de los tepalcates, an offsite project with a performance and presentation video commissioned by the Swiss Institute of New York in Mexico City (MX), 2021; Volvi a ver animales en la noche at the Fundación Alumnos 47 in Mexico City (MX), 2019; and their participation in the Venice International Performance Art Week, Palazzo Mora, Venice (IT), 2016.

Noé Martínez is a visual artist and filmmaker who graduated from Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado (“La Esmeralda”) in Mexico City. His work functions as a case study that emerges from personal history, making use of ethnographic methodologies and research of the various histories of indigenous communities of the American continent. Martínez’s work has been screened at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 2019; 21 Bienal de Arte contemporáneo SESC Videobrasil, São Paulo, 2019; FilmFront, Chicago, 2019; Native Crossroad Film Festival, Oklahoma, 2018; Festival Internacional de Cine, Morelia, 2018 (Winner of Eye to the Best Short Film of Michoacán); and at the International Performance Art Week, Venice (IT), 2016.