Impressions of CDMX - from the perspective of an art residency

Photo: Andy Allen-Olivar

CDMX is an assemblage of concrete and cables and flora all tightly packed in between. A choreographed film of cars balancing way too much stuff, held together by a frayed neon string, or a wire, say. Kids resting beautifully on endless shoulders on radiating transport; a soundtrack of wolves whistling of their sweet potatoes, buzzes that could be electricity or insects folded in concrete cracks; and the low hum of tectonic activity.

In this sense, it feels somehow more in line with your existence to be an artist here – being part of dusting something you have learned or seen and passing it around for everyone to see, just like anyone else here. The way the city is pieced together makes you feel like you are constantly seeing a hand behind the process. Not in the slick way that European countries are put together. And it's refreshing to see the process, reminding you that someone specializes in streetlights, in fixing the cracks in steps, in moving pavements to make way for tree roots. It’s one of those places where they still produce every single part of something themselves. Your microwave is broken? Go to the microwave street and there is a vendor that will probably have a plastic-cracked version of your microwave that you can take a part from. Want to repair your cameras? There is a guy for that. Bend neon tubes? There’s a guy for that (they’re usually men, since unfortunately it’s still a pretty macho country, but that’s a conversation for another time.) Think of any material or process you want to work with, and it’s probably possible. Everyone is so happy and generous to help you produce something that seems to have no function. Kind and all proud to show their skills. And when you are tired from sweating around town finding holograms and glass, you get some tacos or a 3-course menu lunch; delicious and cheap, have a beer and continue. Rasmus and I are struggling on a daily basis to get the perfect photograph of the tree trunks morphing the asphalt, concrete, iron. We still haven’t succeeded.

Photo: Andy Allen-Olivar

Photo: Andy Allen-Olivar

While you are waiting for your rolls to be developed, or your plexiglass to be molded, go see some gallery spaces. It was real refreshing to go to Museo Jumex, a building that felt large and familiar in expectations of what it would contain, similar to Whitney or Moderna Museet, but instead of showing the same artists that probably inspired our parents’ generation, it showed people that inspired me when I began deciding to be an artist, names like Moyra Davey, Walead Beshty, Dan Graham.

And the smaller galleries are sweet like a sea view. High ceiling spaces with windows that let in dappled shadows of foliage onto paintings and concrete. Or even the more pop-up spaces that we are almost certain are just peoples’ living rooms. Climbing three flights of stairs in a building with no notice outside to come to see people's paintings in rooms with unpretentious parquet flooring. Cute as Christmas. Makes you feel sad for living in Stockholm knowing that everyone's apartments have been conformed to a bland IKEA nothingness, lacking any patina that artworks can react to. It has reminded me how important architecture is in showing work, and gives me an ick to think how safe and clean all the galleries in Stockholm think their spaces should exist.

So far one month in, it has been a bit harder to get into the art scene than we expected. Our residency has been surprisingly independent. The curator of the residency means well but has a complex relationship to the truth. But the first 3 weeks were burned out from jet-lag, altitude, and being stupid tourists being in the sun too long, exhausted from the impressions of sounds and smells and the occasional taco going the wrong way. A great mingling trick has been to have cute baby Lo crawl dustily on the floors and smile at gallery owners from their shoes.

Photo: Andy Allen-Olivar

Photo: Andy Allen-Olivar

Another constant element in our heads being here is the gentrification, and a reminder that artists are usually the first to pave the way for a neighborhood to turn wrong. It makes it feel more sinister when you internally glow at how cheap working with things is here, and again because they feel like they are just sweet dads, happy to explain to us surrogate kids how to fix things. It helps that we as a group have a good level of Spanish. Really helps a lot with making work also when communicating what you are trying to achieve. Everyone is so nice. Going to Soma for their weekly seminars is comforting. It feels like you are part of a collective learning and to rest a hand on the huge beautiful tree to calm your longing for Swedish nature.

It also gives you a bit of relief that Sweden has such a lack of aesthetic history in comparison. It must be very hard to be a Mexican contemporary artist now and not refer to the past here, when the past feels so much more contemporary than anything anyone else could make; alternate forms of knowledge and looking at the world, an intelligence in materiality and craft that is so linked to otherness, and a closeness to death. And therefore, it seems inevitable that most young artists somehow sneak in a skull or two. But it also makes you proud for them to be so close to the US and to still maintain so much of their identity, perhaps which is why they give so much importance to their holidays. Tuva accurately pointed out that it feels like people are constantly preparing for their next big party.

Now we are entering the last weeks of our two-month residency, putting our money where our mouths are and preparing for a show. It feels like we should do this every year.

Andy Allen-Olivar, Olga Krüssenberg, Rasmus Richter and Tuva Björk

The group will be presenting a show at KOIK Contemporary, CDMX, from December 13-20. Vernissage on December 13th 18:30 - 22.00, and open by appointment for the rest of the period.

Andy Allen-Olivar (b. 1995, Bogotá) is a multimedia based artist working with photography, film, installation, text and performance. He graduated with an MFA from Konstfack in 2022 and is notably the 2025 Bernadotte Grant Holder in connection to which a show is due at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 2026. His work can be currently be seen in the ongoing group exhibition Samtidigt at Fotografiska Stockholm.

Olga Krüssenberg (b. 1995, Stockholm) is a 2024 MFA graduate of the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm and has studied documentary filmmaking at Biskops Arnö and Ölands Folkhögskola. Anchored in moving images and installation, her work has been screened at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Tempo Dokumentärfestival and competed in Startsladden at Gothenburg Film Festival, Sweden’s biggest short film competition. She is currently working on her first feature film set in Svalbard which was selected at this year's Wild Card project by the Swedish Film Institute.

Rasmus Richter (b. 1997, Stockholm) works with sculpture and drawing. He is currently studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and previously studied at La Esmeralda in Mexico City. Rasmus also runs Centrum för Social Skulptur, an artist organisation based in Stockholm. His sculptures, often assembled from long-kept fragments, lean on wavering feet, drift into daydreams and might lose their balance at any moment.

Tuva Björk (b. 1994, Helsinki) is a hybrid filmmaker based in Stockholm. Her feature Unanimal premiered at CPH:DOX 2025, alongside her short Fear Fokol, which won Best Swedish Short Film at Uppsala Short Film Festival and the New Doc Award at Tempo Documentary Festival. She co-runs Sundays with Sally & Tuva, an ongoing experiment in filmmaking as communal practice, and is a founding member of the production company Bank AB.