Hopscotch, Art Basel Cities Week

The Art Basel Cities Week will take place in Buenos Aires from September 6-12. A long-term collaboration with the vibrant Argentine capital, Art Basel Cities: Buenos Aires will celebrate the city’s thriving cultural ecosystem, inviting international audiences and Art Basel’s extensive network to experience and immerse themselves in its dynamic art scene.

‘Hopscotch’, curated by Cecilia Alemani, has been conceived as an artistic journey through the city, for the Art Basel Cities Week in Buenos Aires. Staged across three neighborhoods, ‘Hopscotch’ will traverse the capital, with site-specific sculptures, experiential installations, and live performances by Argentine and international artists. Alongside ‘Hopscotch’, the Art Basel Cities Week will present a Cultural Partner Program of exhibitions, performances and special events at the city's leading museums, foundations, associations, and non-profit organizations. The Week will be completed by an extensive talks program focusing on Buenos Aires' active art scene and including in situ conversations with the artists participating in the program.

Mika Rottenberg, known for her video installations exploring the dual seduction and desperation of our hyper-capitalistic, globally connected world, has chosen La Boca – historically the melting pot of immigrant cultures in Buenos Aires – for her first exhibit in her native Argentina. Documenting the chaos of culture clashes, Cosmic Generator is set between the Yiwu wholesale market in Zhejiang, China, and the neighboring border towns of Mexicali, Mexico, and Calexico, California. Each location is represented by real spaces – the plastic vendors of Yiwu, the bargain shops of Mexicali, and a Chinese restaurant in Calexico – but a surrealist sequence of events overtakes the film. In this parallel world, fabricated tunnels move goods and people among these disparate places. Viewers are given a fictional, allegorical window into a complex industrial mire: the camera pans rooms, funnels down narrow passages, and crosses walls, capturing the complex network of labor, global trade, and human migration that characterizes the contemporary economy.