ERRANT PATTERNS, SPECULATIVE STORIES:
Nour Bishouty at Museo Universitario del ChopoPrior to Nour Bishouty’s first exhibition in Mexico, I had never encountered her work in person. Everything I had readabout her practice led me to expect an investigation of archives and documentary forms: works concerned with the gaps and omissions of historical records, skeptical of archival images presented as transparent evidence. Walking through the ground-floor galleries of Museo Universitario del Chopo in Mexico City, however, I was surprised to encounter a constellation of works that appeared almost childlike. The artist draws on deeply researched family history, contending with gaps in the archive and exploring how they relate to the wider omissions of Western knowledge. But bright colors and naive, even awkward, figures populated drawings and sculptures whose visual language seemed, at first, far removed from the sober aesthetics often associated with archival practice. As I spent more time with this language, I came to see it as a proposition for a different model, one that approaches memory obliquely—through errant objects, speculative narration, and unstable bodily forms.