26 Sep URIEL VIDES – ART AND ARCHITECTURE DERIVES 🗓 🗺
Vibrant and Provocative San Juan de Letrán
Uriel Vides Bautista
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Vibrant and Provocative San Juan de Letrán
Conversation with Uriel Vides Bautista
- Saturday, September 27, 2025
- 13:00h
- At Arte Abierto | 2nd floor ARTZ
- Free admission
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No registration required.
San Juan de Letrán—now known as Eje Central Lázaro Cárdenas—is one of the most iconic avenues in Mexico City. Inspired by New York’s Fifth Avenue, it housed skyscrapers, cinemas, theaters, and hotels that defined the economic and cultural life of the city center for most of the 20th century. However, beyond its urban and architectural significance, San Juan de Letrán was a subversive space where individuals and practices that deviated from the dominant social norms thrived.
Through photographs, paintings, and various written sources, we will explore the dual history of this avenue: on one hand, as a prototype of post-revolutionary urban planning; and on the other, as a meeting place for LGBTQ+ individuals who found in its sidewalks, awnings, and movie theaters a space for socializing and expressing their desires. Beneath the visible veneer of progress, this presentation will reveal a dissident geography that reflected the tensions and contradictions of a city eager to be modern.
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Uriel Vides Bautista
Holds a BA and MA in Art History from UNAM. His research explores the intersections between art, public space, and sexual dissent in 20th-century Mexico. He worked as a researcher at the Palacio de Bellas Artes Museum (2019-2023), where he coordinated the mural collection and managed the donation of the first mural by a woman, Rina Lazo, to the museum. He has collaborated on curatorial and editorial projects with institutions such as the Tlatelolco Cultural Center and the Amparo Museum. He was the editor of La Bola, a magazine for popular history, and has published articles in magazines such as Artelogie, Bitácora Arquitectura, and Terremoto. In the academic sphere, she has taught courses on Mexican art at the History Department of FES Acatlán, and has also offered independent courses on art, memory, and sexual dissent. Currently, she focuses her professional practice on research, writing, teaching, and public outreach.
Arte Abierto continues with its new public program Derivas de Arte y Arquitectura (Art & Architecture Derives), which seeks to renew our gaze on the architectural legacy of Mexico City. From a series of talks focused on rescuing the parallel stories of emblematic architectural projects and public spaces that have witnessed the variable intersection between art and architecture. In this first stage, the program deals mainly with modern architecture, based on a series of talks given by invited curators, architects, artists and urban planners.
With this program, ways of returning to architecture part of its public, experiential, collective character and close to those of us who inhabit the city are tested, recognizing in it its condition as a living archive. From these talks, circumstances, contexts and anecdotes are revealed that have been part of his sensitive memory and that complement his material memory, a relationship that often escapes documentary narratives and academic accounts.
The objective of the Derives is to generate experiences of spatial rediscovery, which allow us to renew our gaze on the legacy of certain emblematic architectural and artistic works, as well as those that have been forgotten.
The derives will be carried out free of charge on the last Saturday of each month, at 1:00 p.m. with a limited capacity.
Arte Abierto Derives :
February 26: Tania Ragasol / Entorno urbano, cotidianidad y arte: La Torre de los Vientos by Gonzalo Fonseca
March 26 : David Miranda / Del Animal Herido y otros eventos escultóricos dentro de la arquitectura moderna
April 23: Gustavo Lipkau y Xavier Hierro / Integración plástica de los edificios del campus central de CU: sus murales
May 28: Marisol Argüelles / La casa-estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo. Del espacio doméstico a la dimensión de lo público
June 25: Luis Javier de la Torre/ La Ruta de la Amistad MÉXICO68… más allá de 1968
July 30: Aldo Solano/ Architecture for playing in 20th Century Mexico City.
August 27: Christian del Castillo/ Tracing the modern in the architecture of the Historic Center of Mexico City.
September 24: Juan José Kochen/ The Ideal of the Multifamily Apartment cComplex.
October 29: Tania Candiani/ Quantum Prelude. Sound activation by Tania Candiani.
March 25: Ana Garduño/ Cultural Geographies: The invention of museum circuits in 20th century Mexico City.
May 27: Rebeca Barquera/ The Plastic Integration Movement México: More than murals on buildings.
June 17: Julián Arroyo Cetto/ Max Cetto in the beginning of El Pedregal.
July 29: Peter Kriegel/ The eco-aesthetics of El Pedregal and constructive botany in the megacity of Mexico.
August 26: Arturo Rivera García y Roberto Bustamante Castrejón/ Jardines del Pedregal Legacy: Memory and Identity.
September 30: Tonatiuh Martínez/ The garden as an extension of nature.
October 21: Lorena Botello/ Clara Porset’s Design: Between Tradition and Modernity.
March 23: Alejandro Ochoa Vega y Francisco Haroldo Alfaro Salazar/ Cinemas in Mexico in the 20th Century: Distant Spaces in Memory.
April 20: Rodrigo Torres Ramos / Pictorial Functionalism: The proposal for plastic integration of Mario Pani and Carlos Mérida.
June 22: María Bustamante Harfush / Public work and collective housing by Abraham Zabludovsky.
July 27: Veka Duncan / El Art Déco en México. La nacionalización de la modernidad.
August 31: Balam Bartolomé / Visiones del Altépetl caído: Un relato de Tlatelolco desde el arte.
October 19: José Ignacio Lanzagorta / The sixties and the christening of the Zona Rosa.
November 23: Eder Castillo & Arturo Ortiz Struck / GuggenSITO beyond the unfolding cube. Public art and interactivity.
March 29: Ximena Apisdorf / Architecture and museum: The transformation of the Centro Cultural Arte Contemporáneo
April 26: Lorena Botello / A Museum Designed for a Modern Art Collection
May 31: Carlos Rodríguez / Nonoalco in the Cinema, Shadow of Modernity
June 21: Erik Carranza / The cells that no longer explode: in search of an absent bust (that of JFK) and its relationship with GoSk8Day (June 21) in the Jardín Balbuena neighborhood
July 26: Rocío Martínez Barrera / Vladimir Kaspé: Architecture as a whole
August 23: Elisa Drago Quaglia / The Madman Pallares: A Futurist in Mexico
September 27: Uriel Vides Bautista / Vibrant and Provocative San Juan de Letrán
