Mexico attracts French artists and gallery owners

A bustling Mexico City. Underground Mexico City. Mexico City, the capital of possibilities. For thirty years, artists and professionals from around the world have been converging here, in the wake of Belgian Francis Alÿs and British artist Melanie Smith, all fascinated by its beauty and ugliness, its museums and gambling dens. French curator Michel Blancsubé, who settled there in 2001, makes no bones about the endemic violence plaguing the country. In May, the capital's mayor's secretary and a councilor were murdered in the street.

"All the evils of the earth are gathered here ," acknowledges this Artaud specialist. "But there is more space to think." More space, period. "Artists find lines of flight here, other urban dynamics, other creative processes, other materials," lists Tatiana Cuevas Guevara, director of the city's University Museum of Contemporary Art (MUAC).

Kader Attia , who has just exhibited there, first visited Mexico City in the early 1990s. "It was a revelation ," he says. "I found both the things I expected, which were much more impressive in reality, and others I hadn't suspected, from culinary richness to artistic richness." Since then, the Spanish speaker has never missed an opportunity to return, fascinated by "a tranquil society where, suddenly, everything can change. Life is lived at 100 kilometers per hour."

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