The Great Mexican Art Boom: From Murals to Memes
The Mexican Disneyland.
So last week was Art Week in Mexico City and we discussed it during the last publication. But I can’t stop thinking about how exciting, insightful, and fun this week is. Like Disneyland for adults, whether you are into art, culture, innovation, finance, society, or party this week gives a snapshot of what is going to be the future of many cultural and social affairs. So after a thriving week talking with artists, galleries, investors, and spending a whole morning hanging around degen crypto bro’s talking about art. My question remains, why do we talk about art as financial speculation instead of tools for the creatives?
Mexican contemporary art spent decades building its reputation through raw talent, cultural depth, and the occasional controversial piece that made conservative aunties clutch their pearls. Artists like Gabriel Orozco, Francis Alÿs, and Teresa Margolles were turning heads internationally while crypto bros were still trading Pokemon cards.
Meanwhile, in Crypto Land...
While Kurimanzutto was establishing itself as the powerhouse of Mexican contemporary art, some guy named Beeple was about to sell a JPEG for $69 million.
Traditional Mexican galleries like Labor and RGR continued doing what they do best, discovering talent, nurturing artists, and selling works to people who pronounce "investment portfolio" with their pinkies up. }the crypto art world was having what can only be described as a collective fever dream, with prices going up faster than avocados.
Both worlds run on a fuel mixture of creative and operative talent, hype, and what economists call "trust me, bro" valuations.
Here's the thing: Whether you're selling a masterpiece through Kurimanzutto or dropping an NFT collection, the financial world is playing both sides like a fiddle. They're profiting from the mystery in traditional art and the chaos in crypto art. Meanwhile, artists are still struggling to get fair value for their work in both worlds.
What we need isn't another platform for trading JPEGs or another secretive gallery opening dropping fancy wine, Esquites, and Mexican gin.
We need tools that give power back to the creators. Imagine a world where artists could:
Track their work's true market value
Control their secondary sales
Access transparent market data
Get paid fairly without middlemen taking 50% plus "expenses"
Smart Contracts for fair and in-time royalty distribution
Physical artwork tokenization stations (like a photo booth, but for making your art go crypto)
Imagine walking into a gallery where every artwork is not just hanging there looking pretty but is actively connected to a network of IoT devices. These smart galleries would track everything from how many people stopped to admire a piece (or just took selfies with it) to how long they stared at it wondering "Is this really art?" All this data, flows directly into a decentralized network, creating real-time market insights.
Until we build these tools, we're just switching from one group of suited vampires to another, except the new ones wear Patagonia vests and talk about blockchain.