Today we start our Jaguar route. The route is a journey through the museums and cultural centers of Latin America through articles published week after week on our website jaguararte.com.
Our first step takes us to Fundación Casa Proal, located in San Rafael, a small Mexican town in the north of the state of Veracruz. The foundation created by Carlos Couturier is a unique space, a laboratory for creation and research in Latin American artistic practices related to art and nature.
Seduced by the project, the Jaguar Arte team decided to let you discover this project that aims to reinvent the artistic residence, a structure that makes its spaces available to artists, to promote the creation and exhibition of works of art. The Casa Proal Foundation wishes to encourage a global re-reading of environmental issues and the Mexican landscape by artists and inhabitants, and to this end has structured its project around the multidisciplinary nature of artistic expression and educational programs.
The acres of lush vegetation shape the space as far as the eye can see, barely disturbed by a solid building with huge windows that seems to reach the visitors, as a sign of welcome. However, nothing predestined this mansion for such use. Built-in the mid-nineteenth century by French colonists, still attached to a banana plantation barely two hundred years ago, it symbolized the exploitation of Man by Man and did not always show this voluntary and committed look.
From the beginning of the artistic project, Carlos Couturier and the artists at The Casa Proal Foundation took turns to make a syncretism between the French origins of the owner and the resident artists and the exuberance of the flora and fauna of Veracruz.
So far, 15 residents, both men, and women have benefited from the facilities available to them. All, with different reflections, materials, and techniques, transformed this old colonial building into a workshop-gallery to work and reinvent the environment of San Rafael and its ecosystems.
The Jaguar Arte is on its way to its next destination.
Find :The Jaguar Route, a tour around the art centers in Latin America related to nature.
Antoine Troccaz