MUAC, one of Mexico’s top contemporary art museums, became embroiled in widespread controversy last week after it was denounced for exhibiting an Ana Gallardo piece made in homage to an elderly sex worker, with many describing the gesture as misogynistic because the piece utilized words such as “whore.”
As the scandal continued over the weekend, MUAC initially defended the work on the basis of artistic freedom. But the Mexico City museum’s statement appeared not to quell public anger over the piece, which led some to graffiti the institution’s facade with phrases that urged its leadership to respect sex workers.
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“VIOLENCE IS NOT ART,” read one graffitied phrase.
According to online Argentine newspaper Infobae, MUAC temporarily closed Gallardo’s show yesterday. The museum told Infobae that the show would remain shuttered to the public “while a review process is carried out by the corresponding university authorities.”
A MUAC spokesperson did not respond to ARTnews’s request for comment.
Gallardo, an Argentina-born artist who splits her time between Mexico and Buenos Aires, is well-known within Latin America. Her CV includes showings at the Havana Biennial, the Bienal de São Paulo, and the Venice Biennale.
Her MUAC show, which opened in August, focuses specifically on how she addresses issues impacting women and features works such as Extracto para un fracasado proyecto (Extract from a Failed Project, 2011–24), a text piece written directly onto a wall at the museum. That piece derives from her communications with Estela, a resident at Casa Xochiquetzal, a Mexico City shelter for elderly sex workers.
The work features lines of unpunctuated text that appear to vaguely address the experience of visiting Casa Xochiquetzal, which is not explicitly named in the piece. Certain phrases appear to be non sequiturs and include words such as “whore,” though it is not always clear which voice is meant to be uttering these phrases or whose perspective is being channeled.
On Wednesday, on its Facebook page, Casa Xochiquetzal accused Gallardo of failing to establish a meaningful relationship with Estela, something that the shelter claimed showed through in the piece itself. Had Gallardo created a dialogue, the shelter wrote, “she would know that the words ‘prostitute’ and ‘whore’ are painful words for the inhabitants of the house, and now with this piece she is revictimizing them.”
Casa Xochiquetzal went on to accuse Gallardo of “lying” about the origins of the piece, alleging that she failed to mention that she had been asked not to record the words of the shelter’s residents.
A representative for Gallardo’s Buenos Aires gallery, Ruth Benzacar Galería de Arte, did not respond to request for comment.
On Friday, MUAC responded to Casa Xochiquetzal’s statement, explaining Gallardo’s piece as being part and parcel of a larger body of work that “narrates her struggles, encounters, disagreements, victories and frustrations in the face of a society that abandons its elderly.” The museum emphasized that it was committed to freedom of expression.
“MUAC is not alien to the feelings of the community: solidarity with our most vulnerable populations is a value that guides our work,” the museum’s statement said. “We have established contact with Casa Xochiquetzal with whom we will have a meeting that allows us to make a respectful call for dialogue to exchange ideas and positions.”
Some on social media claimed that MUAC had improperly defended an artist for a piece that had offended many. “The violence of privileged whites is freedom of expression,” surmised one X user at the end of a thread that has since accrued nearly 9,000 likes.
On Sunday, the museum was tagged with various phrases that alluded to forms of violence and prejudice. “MUAC PUTXFOBICO,” read one graffitied text that used a gender-neutral form of word for a fear of sex workers. These words were sprayed onto a Rufino Tamayo sculpture outside the museum that was also splashed with what appeared to be fake blood.
The page for Gallardo’s exhibition on MUAC’s website notes that the show will run through December 13.