Is forensic architecture the new muralism of the Mexican state? A reflection on racialized violence and the construction of Mexican identity

In Mexico, the art of historical representation from the last 100 years has influenced and been influenced by the way we understand ourselves as Mexicans. The racial divisions of our society and the racialized state violence have been part of this process of representation. To me, the arts as a medium and mediator for the state’s incessant project of racializing indigenous peoples have intentionally overshadowed racial differences as part of the state’s political discourse. This article shows this relationship by taking as examples two case studies: Forensic Architecture’s exhibition at the Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC) in Mexico City, which portrays the brutal disappearance of 43 students in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero in 2014, and Diego Rivera’s mural The History of Mexico, commissioned in 1929 by the federal government, located today in the National Palace of Mexico City. Legacies of colonial past, such as racial segregation and oppression, and the influence of international ideas of modernization, liberalism and economic progress in Post-Revolutionary Mexico can be located in the material forms of representation of these two narratives. By re-problematizing the virtual spaces they represent, and the physical spaces they occupy or come from, my research points out a new layer of hidden racialized violence in the processes of construction of new and old historical narratives.