Despite being a recent transplant, the inimitable Su Wu — who rose to prominence as a writer and curator with her cult-favorite blog I’m Revolting — is already a fixture on the local art and design scene in Mexico City. Earlier this year, she co-curated the new nomadic design gallery MASA’s Collective/Collectible exhibition, which paired the work of designers living and working in Mexico with historical artworks by artists who had diverse ties to it. Now, she’s currently soft-launching her own gallery space in the city’s Roma neighborhood, V.V. Sorry, with a MASA exhibition of small works. “V.V. Sorry is a studio for living, which means installations and work, but it’s also a space for friends and their projects that share the same inchoate direction that I cling to in my daily life,” she says.
Spending the day with Wu would be a dream assignment for any design writer, or really anyone who considers themselves a fan of good things and great stories. From Wu’s family home, where she lives with her husband, the artist Alma Allen, and their daughter, to an all-but-lost Noguchi mural tucked away above a bustling downtown market, Wu’s vision of Mexico City stays true to her own compelling vernacular. “I like to say I moved to Mexico City because of a Francis Alÿs interview, in which he said this was the last place he’d been where people were still willing to call themselves poets,” she says. In reality, it’s the people who keep the city irresistibly humming along, and the places and spaces they create, nurture, and share that make it feel like home.
Though she’ll soon move into V.V. Sorry, Su’s current residence, where we started our day together, has been something of an incubator for objects to expand, contract, and form new languages together — from a clam collection, started in college, to a grouping of “shards holding shards” from the Lagunilla flea market. “Every dining table is also a work table, of course,” notes Su. Alma’s small works, a metal hard boiled egg holder, candle holders made of tin cans, and found objects litter the surface.
Most of Su’s furniture in the living room is from the Lagunilla flea market, including a large ceramic head the stylist (and Su’s friend) Tessa Watson appropriated as a vase for the shoot. “Some of the pieces are constants that have survived apartments and cities and relationships, mixed in with Mexican modernism and, as of late, baby-proofing.”
Su’s yard…
and epic door.
Our second stop was the tiny art gallery Lulu, founded by writer and curator Chris Sharp and the artist Martin Soto Climent (pictured in stripes and earth tones, respectively) and named for a local Roma Sur juice vendor. “It’s not only the smallest gallery in Mexico City, but also the best,” said Wu.
Housed in a former garage (known locally as a locale), this current iteration of Lulu is a “radically reduced” project space that occupies a meager 140 sq. ft. (Previously, the gallery occupied an even smaller 100 sq. ft. inside the adjoining apartment; proportionally, the spaces are exactly the same.) “Working in a small space is actually more complicated,” notes Climent. “If you put in two or three things, suddenly it’s baroque. You have to be very precise with your intentions.” They seem to be onto something, as a replica of the gallery was commissioned by the Palais de Tokyo last summer for the City Prince/sses exhibition. On view at the time of our vist was Chelsea Culprit’s Malas Madres, a new series of charcoal drawings on canvas that the artist developed over the summer in upstate New York.
“There’s something about the audacity of having an art exhibition in a pile of rubble that feels so thrilling to my teenage self, sneaking onto construction sites in the middle of the night,” Su laughed as we entered Alma Saladin and Marco Rountree’s Guadalajara 90210, a traveling group exhibition that takes over zoning-agnostic spaces. (Previously, a dilapidated mansion; in this case, a construction site being readied for development by Reurbano).
“I love the looseness with which Alma and Marco hold on to their project,” Su said. “But most of all I love the real danger of the sites, with rebar and unsecured rooftops and planks crossing over open pits. I make sure to bring my baby to every show they have.”
Opened during gallery week in September, the iteration we visited featured over 60 artists working with brick as a prompt. “It’s interesting to see how people are working with the same materials but in super different ways,” noted Saladin. We did our best not to trip over anything.
Guadalajara 90210
In Roma, we met up with Nicole Alejandra Pierpont, a former restaurant owner and curator with a background in antiques. Those divergent interests inform the direction of her recently opened shop, Casa Mimi, a cabinet of curiosities that stocks a mix of vintage and local designers. In her tiny two-floor space, we discovered ceramics and textiles by M.A. — including Wu’s favorite rug — bags and silver pieces by Alma, forged at William Spratling’s studio; El Salvadoran “sorpresas picaras” (miniature figurines hidden inside tiny fruits and vegetables, usually humping); and handwoven wool zapatos and slippers.
“Nicole has a great eye for antique Mexican textiles and silver jewelry,” Wu told me, “which means she has a great eye for exactly how I’m planning to dress when full eccentricity kicks in, and I’m dripping with stories of the places I’ve been. She also has a selection of contemporary design, like a silver ring in the shape of a tostada with ‘salsa’ made of embedded garnets.”
Next Su brought us to País de Volcanes, a 2003 public memorial. Sandwiched in between a pair of Tetris-block towers designed by the architect Ricardo Legorreta (a protégé of Luis Barragán) are more than 1,000 pyramids in a shallow “water mirror” fountain feature surrounding the Templo de Corpus Christi. Made of red concrete, the pyramids are a collaboration between Legorreta and Spanish plastic artist Vicente Rojo; they provide an unexpected moment of reflection in historical downtown, proof that art in the city is sometimes easier to stumble upon than seek out.
Xinú is a unisex scent brand, and at their new retail space-cum-gallery in Polanco, designed by Hector Esrawe (whose showroom is next door), we got a tour around a central installation that featured huge blown-glass scent diffusers produced by Nouvel Studios and meticulously constructed displays elaborating on each scent’s ingredients.
“It feels to me very much like how I imagine my beloved friend Hector’s brain: at once catalogued and organized, but also overflowing with ideas,” said Su.
The Xinú staffers told us how all of their scents feature indigenous Mexican plants, many of which were sunning themselves in the in-store courtyard garden. Su’s favorite: OroNardo, with notes of oleander and Mexican tuberose.
“Maybe it’s not entirely fair to call this Noguchi mural ‘forgotten’ or ‘secret,’ but it’s certainly neglected,” Su tells me as we clamber up the stairs of a nondescript market building in Centro; seconds later we’re face to face with an expansive Socialist relief. “Mexico, at the time this mural was made, was a super leftist hotbed. Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Trotsky—it was welcoming of all these leftist thinkers, and a lot of intellectuals who were refugees from Europe.” For her MASA Collective/Collectible contribution, Wu was able to borrow a Jose Dávila painting of the telegram Buckminster Fuller had sent to Noguchi about the theory of relativity. “That telegram was the central, early inspiration for the MASA show, which was about how friendships can come to define a place much better than borders.” Cordoned off by caution tape (and rightfully so, as the floorboards have given way in parts) and practically blockaded by discarded office desks, the mural is something of a preservationist’s worst nightmare—though Wu insists that might not be the right way to frame it. “There’s something really lovely about passing a Noguchi on your way to fight a parking ticket,” she says.
For 160 years La Zamorana, Su’s favorite paper shop in central Mexico City, has been owned by the same family. Su uses their lanterns as sculptural light fixtures at home. “You may recognize these paper lanterns from such celebrations as… any night at my house,” she laughed.
We crossed the street to visit an unmarked hardware store that stocks rope and woven essentials, almost like a low-key Muji. “The best thing about visiting a list of my secret spots in Mexico City is that I’m really terrible at secrets,” she said. “I’m a blurter, and here’s another one: This little hardware store is my favorite in the city for loofahs and woven mats and sisal rope.”
Tucked away on a leafy street in Juárez, Elizabeth Fraser’s eponymous Elly’s is the kind of casual-cool neighborhood haunt that has so quickly come to define Mexico City’s current cultural renaissance. The restaurant’s branding suite, by local studio Futura, features an instantly lovable logomark and a color palette of baby pink and primary blue; a pair of lips seals it with a kiss.
Ordering off such an aesthetically-driven menu might give one pause in New York or LA, but Elly’s does not disappoint. “Elly’s will not be a secret for long, especially with that antipasto platter,” says Su.
The dishes flowed freely, not hemming to any specific cuisine or ingredient list so much as reveling in their own delicious idiosyncrasy: a fig salad that looked like it was invented to spite avocado toast; Octopus a la plancha; baked lasagna; and last, but not least, the restaurant’s soon-to-be-signature chicken dish.
And did we mention the bar? Where of course you should order a cocktail made with Don Julio 70, the world’s first clear añejo tequila, which pairs an añejo’s flavor complexity with the smoothness of a blanco?
The decor at Elly’s also features blonde woods, brass accents, and hand-hewn serveware; the covered backyard, clad in tile, offers diners the opportunity to watch the chefs cook in the open-air kitchen. “I met Elly before she opened this restaurant, at a witches’ night that I probably shouldn’t talk about too much,” Su mused, “except to say that women are powerful when they are this good at what they do.”
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IRL, Mexico City really is a charming mishmash of architectural styles, a delicious spot for foodies, and a serious destination for anyone interested in design culture. That’s why, when we saw that one of our favorite photographers — Eric Petschek, the interior designer and architectural photographer behind the Instagram account @cb — was in Mexico City documenting his trip with iPhone and DSLR in hand, we immediately reached out to see if we might publish the results.
MASA was inevitable, and MASA was what we'd been waiting for — a stake planted for high-end design within the cultural renaissance happening in Mexico City right now. Everyone talks about the city's epic food scene, and its influential art galleries, and the Zona Maco fair, and the budding starchitects building fancy museums. There's even a Design Week Mexico and a couple of good design galleries working with local talents. But before MASA debuted this past week, with an exhibition of furniture and lighting by 15 of the city's top artists and designers, there wasn't really a definitive platform for contemporary experimental design, at least not one as ambitious as this.
A hybrid cultural venue and design gallery intimately nestled in a modernist apartment building in the Roma Norte neighborhood of Mexico City, Studio IMA — which stands for “in my apartment” and nods to the Japanese word for “the present” — follows the shoppable interior model of The Apartment by the Line or Casa Perfect. But while those locations merely gesture towards an inhabited domestic space, Studio IMA founder Bettina Kiehnle Garza lives right alongside the art and objects on display day and night.
