Photos by Robert Zimmerman
Mexico-City based artist Daniel Aguilar Ruvalcaba will be in-residence in the Ruby to transform the gallery into a space that questions how contemporary art can be used to understand extreme economic realities.
About
Daniel Aguilar Ruvalcaba (b. León, 1988) is a conceptual artist based in Mexico City. As the founder of the artist collaborative and gallery Biquini Wax EPS, Ruvalcaba regularly collaborates with writers, economists, and other intellectuals in its orbit. His work frequently takes up issues of desire and capitalism. By engaging the imaginary, Aguilar invites viewers to consider economic realities in a different light. For example, he is currently attempting to fight extreme poverty with extreme wealth by cloning the hair of Carlos Slim (the richest man in Mexico, and the fifth-richest person in the world). Ruvalcaba explains, “I explore the connections, tensions, and disputes between images, economics, and desire.”
Visit the artist’s personal site here.
Header image courtesy of Colección Coppelganger.
About the Ruby Exhibit
During his residency at Duke, Daniel Aguilar Ruvalcaba created a site-specific installation for the Rubenstein Art Center’s gallery. The exhibit, Who Owns Poverty in Mexico?, was an invitation for philanthropists like David Rubenstein (founding donor of the Rubenstein Arts Center) to consider this problematic question.
This exhibit initiated discussion around a problem with no easy solution. Through this installation, Ruvalcaba also offered Rubenstein a concrete business proposal: To make a “drawing” by raising one Mexican above the poverty line in their lifetime. “With many of the things that I make and present, I am interested in
having a conversation and using it as a starting place,” shares Ruvalcaba. “In this case I was thinking: What could be related to me, but also the specific place [the Ruby]?”
On-campus engagements included:
- Ruby Friday “A Talk About Turtles” (Sep 6)
- Who Owns Poverty in Mexico? (On view Sep 10–Nov 3, 2019)
- Opening reception (Sep 12)
- Emergent Futures: State of the Field Conference (Sep 14)
Exhibit Review in The Chronicle
"It is a normal Tuesday evening commute — until, as I stare out the smudged windows of the C1, I notice something peculiar: A man is watching me. He’s seated squarely, unmoving, behind the second-floor windows of the Rubenstein Arts Center, looking out onto Campus Drive and whoever goes past."