Alcira Soust Scaffo

Based on extensive documentary research, the recovery of part of her personal archive and a set of testimonies, the exhibition emphasizes the relationship between her political and poetic militancy, through a wide range of action-poems, translations of French poetry and visual poems. It focuses on her work as a poet, as well as on the relationships she had with leading agents in the cultural life of Mexico during the second half of the twentieth century, especially in the field of literature, theater and visual arts.
 

Alcira Soust was part of the resistance at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) during the military occupation in 1968 and also in other social struggles within the same university, such as the union strikes of the 1970s and the student movement of the University Student Council (CEU) in the 1980s.

Alcira Soust was a muse and mythical figure for several generations of young people, activists and artists in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Roberto Bolaño, a personal friend of the poet and who belonged to the avant-garde group the Infrarrealists, established the myth about Alcira in two of his novels, The Savage Detectives and Amulet, the latter being dedicated to her. However, the exhibition does not seek to inquire into the myth, but instead gives itself the task of reconstructing the worlds of Soust, along with her artistic, political, Latin American and anti-imperialist ideology, and the way in which these intermingled with her personal life.

Artist: Alcira Soust Scaffo (Durazno, 1924-Montevideo, 1997)

Curators: Amanda de la Garza and Antonio Santos

Translation: Fionn Petch, Celorio Morayta, servicio especializado de idiomas