Through her work, Pia Camil has shown a proclivity to failure or the decaying associated to the Mexican urban landscape, aspects of modernist culture and traces of art history. Her practice has explored the urban ruin – including paintings and photographs of halted projects along Mexico’s highways (Highway Follies); abandoned billboards that become theatre-like curtains therefore theatricalizing failed capitalist strategies (Espectaculares Paintings), or the problems and contradictions that arise when engaging with iconic art works (No A trio A or Cuadrado Negro).

For her lecture Camil will explore and discuss our relationship with the urban milieu and include an act of collaboration which is central to her practice. “Camil’s textiles require direct participation, quietly emphasizing the characteristic experience of the art fair, where the act of looking at art is as important as the act of looking at others and distinguishing oneself from them.” (from wall text at Frieze 2015)

Pia Camil (b. 1980) lives and works in Mexico City. She has a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art, London. Her work has been exhibited internationally with recent solo-exhibitions including: Laugh Now, Cry Later at OMR Gallery, Mexico City (2020); Here Comes The Sun, performance at Guggenheim Museum, New York (2019); Fade into Black: Sit, chill, look, talk, roll, play, listen, give, take, dance, share, Queens Museum, New York (2019); Bara, Bara, Bara, Tramway Art Space, Glasgow (2019); Telón de Boca, Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City (2018); Split Wall, Nottingham Contemporary (2018); They, Galerie Sultana, Paris (2018); Bara, Bara, Bara, Dallas Contemporary (2017); Slats, Skins & Shopfittings, Blum & Poe, New York (2016); A Pot for a Latch, New Museum, New York (2016); Skins, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati (2015); The Little Dog Laughed, Blum & Poe, Los Angeles (2021, 2014); Espectacular Telón, Galerie Sultana, Paris (2013); Cuadrado Negro, Basque Museum Centre for Contemporary Art, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain (2013).

Pia Camil's website.

Bara Bara Bara installed at Tramway, 2019. Photo by Keith Hunter, Courtesy of Tramway