In this episode of Culture in a Time of Crises, artist Gabriel Kuri talks to Dr. Shwetal A. Patel about his early years growing up in Mexico City, his friendship with other artists, and why he always knew he was an artist. Kuri also shares his experiences of being born and raised in Mexico City, moving to London to attend Goldsmiths College in the early 1990’s and living in Brussels since 2003. Kuri reminisces about how he always thinks back to “the ultimate organized chaos” of his homeland, something which has inspired his problem-solving skills, and continues to shape his own art practice.
“I am very much a Mexico City person. I was born and raised there. Mexico City is a brutal place. Gigantic and multilayered would be an understatement. It’s a place that, in a sense has everything working against it so that it should really not allow it to function. But it does. It’s the ultimate organized chaos. Everything works in the end, although it shouldn’t. I guess I saw a lot of that kind of problem-solving mentality in many different situations all of my life and probably that has seeped into the way I look at sculpture in a way that may be nothing else that I’ve learned afterwards more consciously.”
– Gabriel Kuri, Artist