JAI STREET
ISSUE 02
YOPE PROJECTS
Oaxaca’s Yope Projects is spreading its wings. An art collective founded to platform young artists in the southern Mexican state, the group has garnered a large amount of attention from outside of Oaxaca’s borders in the last few years, participating in and curating shows in Los Angeles, New York, and Mexico City while continuing to work with and show artists in their hometown.
Though their artistic ethos is ever-evolving, Yope Projects is generally interested in the global language of digital culture, and, more recently, attempting to relate it to the traditional art histories that contextualize it in Oaxaca. At the time this interview was conducted, they were hosting a show at their flagship space in Oaxaca in collaboration with L.A’s John Doe gallery, an exhibition emblematic of their ever-growing aptitude and reach.
​
Over zoom, I sat down with two foundational members of the collective, Andy Medina and Gibran Mendoza, to discuss the recent surge of attention to their collective, their artistic aptitude, and what they see themselves doing next.
​
My first question is a pretty basic one: how did you guys get started? I know you guys have been around for a while. Gibran: Well, Yope was founded in October of 2017. We started showing ourselves here in Oaxaca because it was hard to find places to show our own work. Andy: We’ve had a few changes of membership since we started, but at the moment we have six. Yope Projects is centered around a studio in Mexico City and a studio in Oaxaca, so it was important for us to have a thesis space. We wanted to have a space not only to show our works, but to show the works of other artists. To bring them to Oaxaca and experiment conceptually and form-wise. We had a lot of information from the old art in Oaxaca— the traditional art. But we found it important to explore what was going on with the art scene here for the new generation. Really, we were also trying to just pay rent for a space. So having a collective space helped with that. Dividing the rent into six parts is easier. It’s also important for us to have a space to exchange work stylistically.
How do you see your practice(s) and the collective as having changed over time? Andy: Across seven years our practices, conversations, and exhibitions have changed a lot. We’ve been building a lot of connections to other places outside of Oaxaca, like Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Yucatán in Mexico, as well as outside the country. Right now we have an exhibition here with artists from L.A. as well. Gibran: It’s a very interesting show. We’ve wanted to collaborate with these artists from L.A. for years before Covid, and now we can finally do this show here.
​​
And how do you know the artists from L.A.? From the internet? Gibran: Yeah, from instagram. That’s where we started to exchange messages and talk about the possibility of collaboration.
You mentioned a difference between the traditional art community in Oaxaca and your generation, I'm curious if you could elaborate on that? Do you see that difference in your work itself? I notice your work is really invested in imagery of the internet and cartoons, yet it still does maintain traditional influences. Gibran: The art scene here in Oaxaca is very interesting, because most galleries show very specific, traditional art. It commercially rewards selling that kind of art. Especially for foreign buyers. So it was very difficult for us after we finished school to find places to show our work. It’s still difficult now for young people to enter into those galleries if you don’t make that same kind of traditional work. So we want to change that by using other artistic languages and images. We all grew up in the nineties and have that background in common, so that definitely shows itself in the work as well.
​
​I’m curious if you could talk more about your relationship to Mexico City and other regions of Mexico? I know Oaxaca is a very specific place with a very specific cultural history, so I'm curious how you guys feel Oaxacan art relates to and interacts with people from other regions of the country, and how you made those connections. Andy: A lot of us went to school in Mexico City. I went to school in Mexico City, and my first exhibition was in Mexico City. So a lot of my community is from there. This is true not only for myself. Kasser (Sánchez) for example, another member of the collective, has a lot of connections to Mexico City. I think millennials and our generation have a very similar artistic language in Mexico City and other places in Mexico in general. We have a more pop language. We all have cartoons to reference, TV to reference, internet to reference, etc. I think this is why we have a relationship with Mexico City, L.A., and generally other parts of the world. The internet created a more widely understandable language for art. I remember 2016 being the first time I saw a “pop” exhibition in Oaxaca. Before that year all of the contemporary exhibitions were about more old-school Oaxacan art, like the painters Tamayo and Toledo, etc. They are the biggest representative artists from Oaxaca. 2016 was the first time I saw a break from that. So when we started the project, we wanted to do something new and work with all this new information.
Do you see that emphasis on newness and“pop-language” as being a consistency of your practice? Or do you think that’s changing?
Andy: The first exhibition in Yope was mainly installation work and performance, we wanted to do other mediums than those that are traditional in Oaxaca. Now, we’re returning to some of the more traditional forms like painting and drawing, but we’re returning to them with new concepts. It’s not the same, because we are working with new questions about our concepts. We are in the middle of the old-school art and a new purpose. It’s different.
​
I noticed that and it’s really exciting. You say you’re questioning stuff about your practice, what kind of questions are you asking yourselves right now? How does that relate you to other places as well? Andy: I’ve been trying to understand what’s happening to “the human” in general. I’m trying to understand what’s happening to the mind of the human in regards to notions of meaning. Recently, I've been really interested in old cave drawings. I’m working with traditional forms here in Oaxaca, pre-hispanic forms. For me it’s very important to try to understand these signs. I’m looking at how the original, or the endemic meanings here in Oaxaca, existed before other cultures came here and trying to draw lines from them to other cultures. Gibran: I think as individuals we all have personal questions about our own practices. But as a collective we all are invested in questioning what it means to be Oaxacan and what it means to be Mexican. This is an important connection to the artists in L.A. In the U.S., they are viewed as Mexicans, but in Mexico, they are viewed as American. They are in the middle of something, looking and searching for their roots. I think questions of roots and in-betweenness are some of the biggest connections between us and the artists in L.A.
