Residency Program 2023-2025

Location

Roma Norte, Mexico city

Duration

Duration and calendar determined with each invited artist.

Curatorial statement

Cave Paintings is an artist residency program that offers a contemporary perspective on mural painting (muralism) through reflections on inhabiting a space, extending its origins back to the ancient material marks left in caves by humans since prehistory.

Invitation-only residency

Currently, we do not accept applications, artist proposals, or nominations from independent curators of fundación/op.cit. The Cave Paintings program is by invitation only.

Selection committee

The selection of artists for the Cave Paintings program is carried out by the board of directors of fundación/op.cit. and an invited committee of Mexican and international cultural agents and institutions.

The premise of the Cave Paintings residency program is for artists to make the space their temporary home and studio, under the proposal of using the walls as the support for the work created during the project. In this way, the residency simultaneously generates an artwork and a material record of the artist's presence in the space.

Context

The Cave Paintings residency program Cave Paintings is a project by fundación/op.cit. focused on the practice of mid-career international artists who are invited to live and work for periods ranging from 1 week to 2 months at the op.cit. residency space located in the Roma Norte neighborhood of Mexico City. Active since 2023,this program allows each invited artist to work from their own pictorial practices and research, using their usual media, applied directly to the walls of the residency. These walls have been specially prepared using a restoration technique developed for the project, which enables the detachment of the painted layer from each surface in the space. At the end of each artist's residency, this technique allows the mural work to be preserved in its entirety.