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Design Week Mexico announces cultural programming lineup

Territorio Creativo

Design Week Mexico announces cultural programming lineup

Design Week Mexico (DWM) has announced the programming schedule for its seventh annual showcase in Mexico City, Mexico. Founded in 2009 by Emilio Cabrero, Andrea Cesarman, Marco Coello, and Jaime Hernández, the multi-day, city-wide cultural event offers a wide array of exhibitions, conferences, installations, and film screenings. The design festival will take place between October 5th and 9th, with certain cultural programs, like the Museo Tamayo DWM Project, running through 2017.

That exhibition will feature a three-dimensional installation in the museum’s Bosque de Chapultepec by a yet-to-be-announced invited designer. Past exhibitors for the Museo Tamayo DWM Project have included artist Tatiana Bilbao and landscape architect Pedro Sánchez Paisajismo.

The festival’s Inédito exhibition will showcase emerging designers in the country’s contemporary design scene, complementing the ongoing Territorio Creativo initiative supported by DWM that helps young Mexican designers exhibit their work in foreign design fairs.

DWM will host a series of special exhibitions at the Museo de Arte Moderno, including the works of Argentinian-Japanese artist Kazuya Sakai. Sakai lived in Mexico between 1965 and 1977 and the exhibition will feature works produced by the artist during his stay, with a particular focus on his Ondulaciones series, a body of work credited with introducing geometric abstraction to Mexico and inspiring the succeeding Geometrismo Mexicano style that came afterward.

The works of great Mexican modernist furniture designer Don Shoemaker will be also celebrated in what is being billed as the first retrospective of his highly influential work. Shoemaker, born in Nebraska but ultimately settling in the Mexican state of Morelia, was prolific during his long career and is considered one of the greats of 20th-century Mexican design. Despite his high-ranking status in Mexico’s modernism scene, his works have mostly been celebrated and exhibited in private collections.

MDW will also host a series of panel discussions and film screenings to support its cultural programming. The Design House installation will showcase the work of various designers and architects who have been invited to transform various spaces throughout an existing home with their works. The Creativity & Change forum will bring together experts in the areas of creativity, design, education, and sustainability to share ideas. And the Angela Peralta Theatre, designed by Mexican architect Enrique Aragón Echegaray and modeled after the designs for the Delacorte Theatre in New York and the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, will screen a series of design-oriented documentaries.

Following Brazil in 2013, the United Kingdom in 2014, and Italy in 2015, DWM will host Germany as its 2016 “Guest Country,” filling many of the festival’s design panels with German designers and artists. The fair also selected the Mexican state of Jalisco as this year’s “Guest State” and will exhibit traditional crafts and contemporary design from the state’s tapatia creative community.

This year’s festivities coincide with Mexico City’s selection as the 2018 World Design Capital (WDC) by the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID). The designation, announced at the ICSID’s 29th General Assembly in Gwangju, South Korea last year, represents the first for a city in the Americas and the sixth such designation, overall. Taipei, Taiwan is the 2016 World Design Capital. The price is awarded every two years to cities the ICSID believes display “a commitment to use design as an effective tool for social, cultural, economic and environmental development.” Cultural programming for DWM will run in tandem with preparations for the WDC celebrations, including the special participation of a delegation from Taipei’s design scene in MDW’s 2016 festivities.

For more on DWM, see their website here.

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