Labor is proud to present DELIRIO (DELIRIUM),
the new performance and solo exhibition by Héctor Zamora. The performative action will only take place on February 7th and 9th at 12pm in the gallery, during art week in Mexico City.

Héctor Zamora (Mexico City, 1974) is a builder of contradictions that generate meaning and awaken the mind so the viewer can discover what appearances conceal. Upon arriving at LABOR, you will see a monumental intervention imposed on the façade. Instead of the usual mint green paint that characterizes the gallery, we encounter an ironic mural labeled with the phrase “Modelo Económico (Economic Model).” On the one hand, it directly questions the art market, reflecting the commercial transactions that occur in the gallery. On the other, it is a reference to the adaptability of the overflowing informal economy that keeps many Mexicans afloat, –outside of the system–, allowing the country’s economy to survive.

The water hyacinth has served Héctor Zamora since his project for the 27th São Paulo Biennial in the Lake of Ibirapuera in 2006, as a basis for proposing an investigation into the relationship between us as human beings and plants as a part of nature. For this special occasion, the Mexican artist highlights the multitude of contradictions associated with the water hyacinth’s presence in the Xochimilco wetland, which was introduced by Carmen Romero Rubio in 1897, the wife of Porfirio Diaz. Concurrently symbolizing an ornamental flower, a dreadful pest, and even a purifying antidote that rids the water of pollutants by absorbing heavy metals, the native species of the Amazon seduces for its great beauty, but in an aquatic habitat, such as Xochimilco, without exit to the sea, it can easily overtake and alter the ecosystem, displacing native species and disrupting water flows.

The paradox is that the water hyacinth street vendors sustaining the informal trade in Mexico by foot, also act as involuntary environmental agents, controlling the accelerated reproductive capability of the plant in polluted water which generates the overabundance of hyacinths. After the prettiest hyacinths are selected, they are transported by foot around the city’s streets, in tubs of water carried over the vendors’ heads, to keep the aquatic plant fresh and attractive to sell as a beautiful flower.

This new exhibition and performative proposal by Héctor Zamora consists of seven lakes with octagonal structures containing the water hyacinths floating on the surface, alongside the presentation of the street vendors of Xochimilco in the gallery, carrying their crowns of hyacinths.

With this new project, Héctor Zamora brings to LABOR the beauty that feeds and asphyxiates, paying homage to economic systems of survival, and confronting us with a delirious and interrogating nature.