These conceptualisms have co-opted several art venues, and even new exhibition venues have been officially created deliberately. In the era of globalization that invade us, this could not be differently [Author mentions the name of three art venues in Mexico City]. Museums also became receptacles of the so-called emergent arts [Author mentions the name of five art venues in Mexico City], these venues are way to alternative now to hung paintings. It took a lot of effort to conquest them, but thanks to globalization we accessed to the international mainstream art.77
Guadarrama describes the current art scene that rules Mexico City. A shift in the mission by several major art museums and art venues in Mexico City within the bounds of the mainstream resulted in a rapid shift of the tide of arts and culture, aligning both into what the hegemonic culture demanded of them. Did that mean that museums in Mexico City became mainsdreamers? Did they follow an artistic mirage? Do they still operate within those hegemonic terms? Suddenly, the museums that used to feature official and legitimized artwork began to show living and contemporary artists, following the international art scene during the 2002 Mexican art boom. Having Gabriel Orozco as its main character, this boom brought Mexico City as a new and emergent art capital in the international art scene, at least for a few years. A fever for showing and consuming Mexican art rose higher and higher from one day to the next. The consequences for the generation of mainsdreamers, the Terry Painters that did not belong to the boom but saw this shift from Mexico, are visible when they tried thereupon to become part of this boom, of the mirage depicted in terms of the mainsdream. The conditions that generated the 2002 boom began with NAFTA and took several years to develop into what it is today. An art scene from the past decade is what mainsdreamers seem to pursue.
Figure 16, Terry Painter L’Artiste, p. 63
Guillermina Guadarrama Peña, ¡Cuidado… pintura fresca! (Mexico: CENIDIAP, July-Sept 2004) http://discursovisual.cenart.gob.mx/anteriores/dvwebne01/confrontacion/conguadarrama.ht m (accessed December 2008) , translated by Frida Cano 77
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