-by Ale Zapata (Curator / External Projects Coordinator at Improper Walls)

Oscar Cueto was born in Mexico City, lives and works in Austria. His work elaborates exercises of writing narratives and reflects on the mechanisms that construct the notion of historicity, knowledge, memory and identity. Such themes are often developed as fictions and in recent work as installations in which the public can interact. His work is part of important collections such as Jumex in Mexico City, Vienna Museum, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and Museum of Latin American Art in Los Angeles. Since 2017 Cueto has been inviting curators and artists to Austria to collaborate on his nomadic project MUME/ Museo Mexicano.

I recently had the pleasure to meet Oscar personally through a mutual artist and friend, Ramiro Wong, it immediately felt like home. Looking through the MUME’s archive I encountered works of Antonio Barrientos, Alvaro Verduzco and Pinto mi Raya, all names that have a personal connection with my former art student years in Mexico.

Let’s get to know who Oscar Cueto is and what he is currently working on.

Who is Oscar Cueto?
I am a Mexican artist living in Vienna and my work is an exercise of writing narratives to reflect about the notions of historicity, knowledge, memory and identity.
You currently live in Vienna. What brought you here and what does this city mean to you?
A project about Wittgenstein brought me 8 years ago to Austria. After two years I came back to stay. I have lived in Austria since 6 years ago. Life in Vienna is a mixed feeling. The city and the country have been very generous to me. It has allowed me to continue working in my field with constant invitations and projects. I also meet many valuable people with whom I collaborate. For this I am very grateful and happy. But there is also a feeling of discomfort because my work reflects on writing history, especially colonial history, and I live on the continent where it all began. However, it is perhaps this feeling of discomfort that drives me to work non-stop.

How did you get into art?
Mmmmhh. Good question, I guess it was the movies. I used to watch a lot of movies when I was a kid. Then came the books. I still think I make my pieces as if I'm telling a movie or a story. In college I started making art. I learned art by doing it, watching movies, reading books and talking to artist friends. I still think that studying art is a waste of time and stupidity.
How do you get your inspiration and what human needs are reflected in your work?
How narratives, oral and written, define our world. And the ability and power we have to create new ones to change the course of history.

Tell us a bit about MUME, what’s the aim of the project?
First of all MUME is an artwork, a piece of mine. Then comes the extended and official version:
MUME / Museo Mexicano is a nomadic anti-museum that seeks to create new narratives in the context of postcolonial and global migration by inviting international curators and artists to present collaborative projects in Austria. The invitation is extended on the sole condition that the invited person invites more creators. The venue of the MUME is not chosen for the best conditions for a museum, but for the ideal conditions of time and place to create the setting and narrative of each new edition. Even though the guests have total thematic freedom to develop their projects, the very objective of this anti-museum is to create narratives antagonistic to dominant thoughts or strategies that only benefit minorities and seeks to collaborate with those creators who work outside of ethnic, social, geographic, economic or political privileges. With its mechanics of invitation, mobile venue and precarious conditions, the MUME aims to blur the classic roles of the art institution, break vertical hierarchies and disassociate itself from art as an economic benefit.

What can we expect about the 6th edition of the MUME and which challenges did you experience along the way?
Just yesterday I read in a book something like: if the third world war broke out, Mexico would survive and still would be there.
I mean, our reality has run parallel to the official narrative for many centuries and that is the contribution of the so-wrong-called peripheral countries: To resist the world being flat, to defend another world. That's how I understood the phrase.
For the sixth edition of MUME, I invited curator Bárbara Peréa who in turn invited Juanjosé Rivas. Their exhibition is a post-pandemic project that in some way is related to all of this. They cannot come for obvious reasons, but with the project in the form of a sound postcard that will be distributed by conventional mail they send me and everybody who receive the post mail a signal: Don't worry, we are still alive and we will continue resisting and the generation after us will do the same and so will do the generation that comes after us. The message of Bárbara and Juanjosé is simple: "I am still listening"

6 Mexican artists and/or curators to keep an eye on
I prefer to name international curators and artists that have something to do with Mexico and/or decolonial Ideas: Andrea Torreblanca de la Sierra (MX), Carlos Palacios (VE), Nina Fiocco (IT), Roselin Rodríguez (CU), Lorena Moreno (MX), RRD (MX), Daniel Aguilar (MX), Colectivo 360 Grados (MX), Mai Ling (CH, AT, AUS) and a lot more!

Tell us a few sentences about your current projects
MUME continues this year with four editions with incredible projects. I am working on a very long project that I will present soon in an anniversary exhibition of the Transdisciplinary Art Study at Heiligenkreuzerhof and the 12-14 Contemporary, which includes praxinoscopes, videos, drawings on objects and revolution movements. I will present a project in public space at Praterstern in collaboration with Egyptian artist Bassem Youssef organized by Philomena +. In summer I travel to Mexico City to collaborate with "Escuchar la calle'' at Error Space. And that's it so far.
What's your curatorial approach?
None, I don't do curatorial work, I do collaborative projects and I invite friends and people that I think can provoke interesting and unexpected dialogues

website

INTERVIEW WITH OSCAR CUETO