Naufus Ramirez Figueroa
cantina Tio Pepe
tattoo on Naufus' arm of his uncle, guerrilla combatant killed publicly during the civil war in Guatemala, and which prompted the exile of his family to Canada as political refugees when Naufus was seven.
Yesterday, I finally met for the first time, Guatemalan/Canadian performance artist Naufus Ramirez-Figueroa, who has recently relocated to Mexico City from Vancouver. I knew of his practice from 2004, when i was introduced to it by Costa Rican artist Federico Herrero (who told me about a performance Naufus had made where he played sexually with a carrot while listening to his father sing Mariachi music), and in 2007 I recommended him to AA Bronson for his exhibition 'School for Young Shamans' in NY.
Yesterday we met to discuss his participation in the exhibition I'm curating next month in Guatemala 'Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, Yucatan and elsewhere', which is loosely based on the travels in the area of Stephens and Catherwood in 1841 and of Robert Smithson in 1969.
We had some Victoria beers at cantina Tio Pepe in the corner of Dolores and Independencia (Pain and Independence!) in Mexico City's Alameda neighbourhood in the city's centre. Tio Pepe remains one of my favourite cantina's in the centre, and which happily hasn't disappeared or been renovated, like many other traditional cantina's which are not there anymore.
You can see more of Naufus work in his website http://www.naufus.com/
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