En lo más negro del Verano / In the Darkest Domain of Summer lyrically emulates the poem of the same name by Peruvian poet Blanca Varela. The exhibition, like its namesake, creates space for viewers to contemplate death at a deep and lasting level. The show, put forward by the Mexic-Arte Museum as part of its annual Día de Los Muertos observation, celebration, and exhibition, detours from the overt frivolity of previous years and instead aims to create a space where viewers can engage more solemnly with the afterlife.
An installation view of “En lo más negro del verano / In the Darkest Domain of Summer,” from the back of the Mexic-Arte Museum looking toward the beginning of the exhibition
Walking through the show, like reading the poem, it is made clear that even during summer’s brightest moments death is an ever-present partner; a partner that we should not be afraid to sit and engage directly and at long stretches with. When we do this we can eschew the notion of treating death as a taboo subject and embrace a greater part of what makes us human.
Luisa Fernanda Perez, Mexic-Arte’s Curator of Exhibitions and Director of Programs, said recently about the show, “We [this generation] are now able to access all of our feelings, but we move from each one rather quickly, but with the exhibit, it allows us to sit with that sense of beauty; that sense of loss.”
An installation view of traditional Día de Los Muertos ofrendas in “En lo más negro del verano / In the Darkest Domain of Summer” at the Mexic-Arte Museum
The creation of such a contemplative space has been successfully made through a series of innovative visual decisions throughout the Mexic-Arte galleries. These visuals start with muted pink wall segments, which bookend the museum, pointed out by Perez as the only visual references to a narrative structural beginning and end. Perez also noted that the pink walls might be seen as aesthetically pleasing, even seen as beautifully feminine, but pink is also, and in parallel with the poem, present in many moments of loss. Metaphor is used heavily in Varela’s poem like the opening lines from which the title comes:
“Your face like water singing
in a corner of the garden,
darkest domain of summer,
as though it were the moon.”
This line of words hinting at the core of the poem; an ever-present darkness, even when there is beauty and light, is not perfectly transmuted into the exhibit. In place of Varela’s metaphors Perez and her team have used dramatic lighting throughout the show to reflect the poem’s thesis. The often drastic lighting, accomplished with heavy use of spotlighting that cast shadows, connects the show from one end to the other, weaving its way over, under, and around Mexic-Arte, sewing together the art objects selected for the front galleries to the more traditional ofrendas in the museum’s rear space.
Camila Abbud, “Puente Libre II,” 2023, concrete, iron, mixed medica, and found objects
Collaboration was at the heart of En lo más negro del Verano / In the Darkest Domain of Summer, including artwork selection and presentation. Each artist approached for the exhibition was presented with Varela’s poem and responded to it either with new or pre-existing pieces. From this interaction choices were made between the artists and Perez. An ingenious example of the collaboration among the Mexic-Arte team and their artists can be seen in the presentations of Camila Abbud and Jahaira Daga Acevedo. Both artists responded to the poem by presenting artworks dealing with the continuous passage between worlds. Abbud’s photorealistic pieces Puente Libre I and Puente Libre II show movement between the Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, and El Paso, Texas, border as a “threshold of light and shadow, traversed by stories of struggle, loss, and hope.” Acevedo’s Latente, a short film capturing the journey between Cerro de Pasco and Lima, Peru, plays on a wall near a mounted set of bus chairs — sourced and installed by the Mexic-Arte team, led by preparator Oscar Guerra-Briseño — to give viewers a semblance of the experience depicted in the film. Like the poem, according to the accompanying wall text, in each of these pieces “beauty and hardship coexist within these complex spaces.”
Jahaira Daga Acevedo, “Latente,” 2019, video
Rubén Ulises Rodríguez Montoya, “Vampiritxs (Edition 01),” 2021, horn tip drilled with six holes by Josh, refrigerator parts found on Long Beach Avenue, pigmented silicone, zip ties, straw hat sombreros from Juarez, Mexico, welding rod, pelts sewn by Karla, Maria, Clara, Sergio (maybe), Gabrielle, Allison, and Morgan, car parts found on annoying freeway
Unique and inventive curatorial approaches, mirroring the emphasis of Varela’s poem, are further on display in the presentation of art by Rubén Ulises Rodríguez Montoya and Jonathan Hernandez. For Montoya’s Vampiritxs (Edition 01), a sculpture resembling a shape shifting creature (nahual) that, “feeds off capitalism, born of labor, migration, and resistance,” Perez worked closely with Guerra-Briseño and her lighting technician Preston Rolls to create a floating display and dramatic shadows. A similar focus on lighting and shadows was applied to the partnering installation by Herandez’s, How long have you been away?, which “evokes the vulnerability of the laboring body and the resilience required to survive it.”
Jonathan Hernandez, “How long have you been away?,” 2025, rectified readymades
When I recently spoke to Perez, I asked her if it was possible for one art form to replicate another: here, an art exhibition from a poem. She said that with this exhibition, the goal of her and her team wasn’t to replicate the rhythms or specifics of Varela’s poem, but to capture its moods and feelings, and like Varela, offer a space that holds a similar room for viewers to sit with what comes after this life and to engage with the enormity of what that means in our day to day.
Perez and her team have succeeded not in replicating the words and beats of Varela’s poem, but in conjuring the same mental and spiritual space; a space that asks the viewers to do more than briefly acknowledge death but instead to sit with it, like you might sit for a long while in the middle of a calm forest, full of bustling leaves, dancing shadows, and rustling water. Perez and her team have created a space where death is something not to be ignored as it often is in the United States or zealously over celebrated as it can be with some Día de Los Muertos festivals. No, here it is something that should be engaged with at length, so that you can have a full understanding of what death takes from you when it fairies a loved one away and what will be taken from others when it fairies you away as well. Here they have created a space to sit with death for a long while so that you can have a full sense of grief, loss, beauty, and life, and from that, have a fuller sense of what it is to be alive.
En lo más negro del verano / In the Darkest Domain of Summer is on view through January 4, 2026, at the Mexic-Arte Museum in Austin.
The post A Poetic Look at Life & Death: “En lo más negro del verano / In the Darkest Domain of Summer” at the Mexic-Arte Museum, Austin appeared first on Glasstire.
Top Five: November 13, 2025