MASA NOMADIC DESIGN GALLERY TOOK OVER A CASTLE IN MEXICO CITY

Founded by Héctor Esrawe, Agé Salajõe, and Brian Thoreen in 2019, MASA is a nomadic design gallery that seeks to create space for collectible design in Mexico City. For the site of their second exhibition, Recover/Uncover, MASA (together with guest co-curator Su Wu) chose a castle-like building in the San Miguel Chapultepec neighborhood, built by German royals in the early 1900s. Continuing their ethos of embracing the city’s “weird, awkward, and mysterious moments,” the collective has taken advantage of the structure’s idiosyncrasies. Visitors need to climb through a large window in the castle’s main room, for instance, to see Perla Krauze’s installation on the front patio. Marking the threshold between inside and outside, Krauze’s tiled floor of found local stones, shifts as you walk, mirroring the tectonics of the city itself. This pleasant unease is indicative of the mood of cultural production in the Mexican capital today — open to experimentation, fluid, and without rules.