The Ministry of Culture of the Government of Mexico and the National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature (INBAL) announce that the RojoNegro Collective, made up of María Sosa and Noé Martínez, has been commissioned to represent Mexico at the 61st International Art Exhibition at the Venice Biennale, which will take place from May 9 to November 22, 2026.
After a process of analysis and deliberation, the proposal by RojoNegro, titled Actos invisibles para sostener el universo, curated by Jessica Berlanga Taylor, was selected for its conceptual framework and its ability to articulate sensitive, situated, and critical visions. The proposal addresses urgent topics such as ancestral memory, epistemic justice, decolonization, and relational ecology, drawing on indigenous, Afro-descendant, and peasant cosmogonies not as external references, but as living matrices of thought that shape their forms of creation, connection, and imagination.
RojoNegro is an artist duo consisting of María Sosa (1985) and Noé Martínez (1986), whose practice interweaves ancestral memory, the languages of the body, and ritual technologies from a decolonial perspective. Through installation, performance, sound, and the use of organic materials, their work summons situated forms of knowledge that question processes of colonization and their persistent effects on bodies, territories, and contemporary worldviews.
The project will dialogue with In Minor Keys (Modo Menor), the curatorial proposal of the 61st edition, developed from the vision of the late curator Koyo Kouoh, which conceives the exhibition as a collective score created with artists whose work merge organically with society.
RojoNegro, Retrato de Sombra I, 2024. Watercolour and applications on paper, 208 x 110 cm. Image courtesy of the artists.
María Sosa graduated from the Universidad Michoacán de San Nicolas de Hidalgo. Sosa’s practice stems from her research about our shared colonial past and how it constitutes contemporary social dynamics as an epistemicide of prehispanic worlds, racism, sexism, and the invisibility of multiple nonwesterner’s ways of life in the American continent. Sosa’s work is nourished by her research of prehispanic art, anthropology, the methodology of Ecología de Saberes and the exploration of production techniques of ritual prehispanic and contemporary objects.
Noé Martínez is a visual artist and filmmaker who graduated from Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado (“La Esmeralda”) in Mexico City. His work functions as a case study that emerges from personal history, making use of ethnographic methodologies and research of the various histories of indigenous communities of the American continent.
RojoNegro’s recent solo exhibitions include: Debut Solo Exhibition, No Man’s Art Gallery, Amsterdam (NL), upcoming; Volví a ser vasija, volví a ser animal a ser planta, volví a ser tiempo, Museo de Arte de Zapopan, Zapopan (MX), 2024; Tepalcates de sueños, commissioned by the Swiss Institute of New York in Mexico City (MX), 2022; and El encuentro de los tepalcates, an offsite project with a performance and presentation video commissioned by the Swiss Institute of New York (USA), 2021.
Their group exhibitions and projects include: Commission for Stuart Collection of UCSD University of San Diego (USA), upcoming; Fantastic Creatures, Museum Van Bommel Van Dam, Venlo (NL), upcoming; Transmisión Ancestral, Plataforma, Guadalajara, Jalisco (MX), 2024; Cordillera, Galería Extra, Guatemala City (GU), 2024; Las estrellas me iluminan al revés, No Man’s Art Gallery, Amsterdam (NL), 2022; and their participation in the Venice International Performance Art Week, Palazzo Mora, Venice (IT), 2016.