This first monographic exhibition of Ricardo Nicolayevsky in his native Mexico is a chronological display of films and videos that includes his early experimental animations and visual essays shot in New York (1982–83) focusing on the urban dynamics of the city and the different characters who inhabit it. Working from a personal perspective, Nicolayevsky made a signature of his intimate portraits of friends, self-portraits, and his 'Lost Portraits: Group Portraits', as he called them, that incorporated the post-punk and queer aesthetics of the time and refer to the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s. By 1985, the artist decided to remove these visual vignettes from public view, only to retrieve them in 1999 and set them to music by his band Silent Opera. This exhibition is a unique opportunity to experience a raw and seemingly unedited compilation of two decades of work of an early representative of the LGBTTQ* community in Mexico and his multifaceted interactions with the music and visual arts scenes.
- Magalí Arriola