Mexico-City based artist Daniel Aguilar Ruvalcaba will be in-residence in the Ruby to transform the gallery into a space that questions how contemporary art can be used to understand extreme economic realities.
Daniel Aguilar Ruvalcaba (b. León, 1988) is a conceptual artist based in Mexico City. As the founder of the artist collaborative and gallery Biquini Wax EPS, Ruvalcaba regularly collaborates with writers, economists, and other intellectuals in its orbit. His work frequently takes up issues of desire and capitalism. By engaging the imaginary, Aguilar invites viewers to consider economic realities in a different light. For example, he is currently attempting to fight extreme poverty with extreme wealth by cloning the hair of Carlos Slim (the richest man in Mexico, and the fifth-richest person in the world). Ruvalcaba explains, “I explore the connections, tensions, and disputes between images, economics, and desire.”
During his residency at Duke, Daniel Aguilar Ruvalcaba created a site-specific installation for the Rubenstein Art Center’s gallery. The exhibit, Who Owns Poverty in Mexico?, was an invitation for philanthropists like David Rubenstein (founding donor of the Rubenstein Arts Center) to consider this problematic question.
This exhibit initiated discussion around a problem with no easy solution. Through this installation, Ruvalcaba also offered Rubenstein a concrete business proposal: To make a “drawing” by raising one Mexican above the poverty line in their lifetime. “With many of the things that I make and present, I am interested in
having a conversation and using it as a starting place,” shares Ruvalcaba. “In this case I was thinking: What could be related to me, but also the specific place [the Ruby]?”
Bricks of money waiting to be distributed by the world’s leading philanthropists.
Fuqua MBA student Ana María Neri Barranco (right) and her brother, Juan Ignacio Neri Barranco (left, owner of Neri | Barranco contemporary art gallery in Mexico City), proposed bringing Aguilar Ruvalcaba to the Ruby as a visiting artist in 2018.
The philanthropic proposal was “whispered” into David Rubenstein’s ear.
A graph indicating Mexican poverty by from CONEVAL, the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy, an agency of the Mexican government.
On-campus engagements included: