JAI STREET
ISSUE 02
IN CONVERSATION:
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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During the Lunar New Year, people gather with their family and stay for long-lasting dinners and Mahjong competitions. One day, we left QiongLai to visit Jiong’s great aunt in the mountains. During lunch, in between conversations in Chinese with her relatives, Jiong chuckled to us: “Everything is organic.” We savored dishes like spicy chicken, pig ear salad, fried fish with chili sauce, boiled vegetable roots, chicken feet, all prepared in large iron woks over a wood fire, drinking gut-burning Chinese liquor poured from a plastic container. The atmosphere of the house and its surroundings were characterized by an eclectic mix of objects spread across the terrain of this traditional Chinese mountain dwelling. This was a place where Jiong spent considerable time as a child. Many farmers' houses in Sichuan have been destroyed since then. Between 2014 and 2020, the Chinese government undertook the staggeringly complex operation of moving 100 millions of its farming citizens from the countryside to rapidly-built towns. This process often resulted in the forced displacement of farmers like Jiong’s family, destroying their homes, or at least partly, as it happened to the house of her father – which sits a four hour walk away perched up in the mountain forest. Even though half of her father’s house is still standing today, Jiong’s father was part of the citizens asked to relocate. “It then becomes easier to control this more secluded part of the population," Jiong assumes.
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This passage to QiongLai offered a glimpse into the reality of the lives of farmers in rural China. Another part of the series focuses on China’s blossoming techno scene which has been solidified in Chengdu by a group of promoters and DJs that have been opening clubs all over the country. The Chengdu’s ”OGs”, as Jiong calls them, are portrayed in the series, offering an image of China’s nightlife far different from the usual scenes of KTV (karaoke) and flashy bars. Among the dynamic nightlife that has made Chengdu beloved by locals and travelers alike stands a community of ravers with whom Jiong grew up when she moved to the city, centered around a techno club called .TAG. Each Lunar New Year, .TAG founder Ellen Hakka organizes an eight day marathon in her club perched atop the 25th floor of a building complex overlooking Chengdu’s skyline. “Friends from all across China gather for this event. Techno, hip hop, ambient, live performances, massages — and a legendary hot pot on the final day — are served to the ravers who usually come from family dinners straight to the club,” Ellen says.
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As Tell was offered to shoot freely within the club, in spite of its no photo policy, we see ravers, international DJs, and Jiong, partying till dawn. “One evening, one of the ravers at .TAG asked what I thought of China. As I was - and am still - discovering this complex country, I candidly replied ‘love it’. But societal pressure is hard on Chinese citizens, he explained, especially for ravers and queer people, namely, the crowd at .TAG. Threats of closure are constant as the police can raid down clubs and bars at any time, most of the time looking for drugs.”
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China’s recent economic boom has been carried out by intense work, known as the ‘996’: working from 9 am to 9 pm, 6 days a week. However, in recent years, sociologists and China experts are witnessing how the generation that followed the 90s economic boom seem to be less keen on partaking in this model of life. Movements like the Tang Ping on social media – the act of taking a picture of someone lying on the floor as a way to reject the societal pressures to overwork and overachieve – show a rebellious side of the Chinese youth. The club culture, as it exists in Chengdu, revolves around a longing for freedom and the choice of designing one’s life outside of the government’s expectations. “This community of friends around Jiong essentially witnessed and fostered the emergence of the techno scene there,” Tell recounts. “In a way, they offer very different images of what China is known for, or pictured as in Western minds.”
Retracing the life of subjects like his friends or own family has been a study that Julien Tell has been practicing throughout the years. The photographer grew up in Oakland, raised by his Japanese mother and around a community of second-generation immigrant kids like himself. “Somehow, looking at Jiong’s community back home and seeing their tight-knit friendship evoked memories of my own experience growing up in California. I have always been interested in the stories of people who migrated from a country to another, and the relationship one has with their home country.”
Julien's upbringing in Oakland took place in a city standing in stark contrast to the ever-expanding, increasingly dystopian tech haven of San Francisco. His first time handling a camera was during his high-school years, capturing times with his childhood friends. "I started by documenting everything. From moments at school to parties at friends' places to the lives of our parents. I wanted to take an image of everything. Despite the differences in our parents’ lifestyles, sharing this connection with my friends made me understand my own heritage as a second-generation immigrant.”
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In this era, dominated by Facebook circa the 2010s, wielding a camera and sharing images on social media bestowed upon him a certain hype among classmates. Following high school, he went to Napa for a residency program for young artists, which ultimately led him to New York University. “I guess my first serious project was at the end of my final year at NYU. It was a project that focused on the journey of my mother, where we would see her in the places of her routine in the Japan she left, and in America where she resides. It depicted the limbo state that somehow defined the life of my mother in the US following her migration from Japan, where the cultural pressure of her rural town and family were too heavy on her.” This series, 家,ホーム, HOME, shows his mother in the two countries where she had lived, and presented through a highly sensitive lens the odd similarities that one individual experiences from a country to another, although in diametrically opposite places in the world.
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Today, Julien Tell works in Berlin where he relocated from New York in 2018. Since his move, Tell has been working for various clients in Europe - fashion brands and artists commissioning him for portraits. His recent work focuses on the portrayal of the Asian global diaspora residing in Berlin. In it, the photographer gravitates towards communities of artists and producers like Why Be, Lawrence Lee, Nene H, D.Dan and Cora. “What inspires me most is seeing different types of Asian people thriving in their lives and respective industries. Berlin is home to many musicians and artists, and in the city you get to meet a diverse community of talents coming from all parts of the world. I mostly come from a documentary-style approach to photography so I like to portray people in a real and delicate manner, without an overload of effects that I can find sometimes superfluous in contemporary photography.” Julien waits for the moment to happen without triggering it, documenting everything from the casual to the spectacular. ​​
