Mexico City’s Art Week Is the Place to Be for Design
MILAN — The sort of attention that Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo drew from the global art scene is back again.
Mexico Art Week, which is anchored by main fair Zonamaco and closes Sunday, continues to welcome more upscale European galleries and brands. Zonamaco, which was founded in 2002, has come a long way and expects to have drawn more than 80,000 visitors this year in line with the 2024 edition. This year Zonamaco alone welcomed 200 galleries from 29 countries across four continents including debut exhibitors as far afield as Kampala, Uganda-based Afriart Gallery, which brought Ethiopian fiber artist Fiker Solomon and Ugandan artist “King of Beads” Sanaa Gateja.
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“I think that Mexico in general has always been an inspirational and magical place for artists to be. This goes back to Diego Rivera and the exchange he experienced when he was in Paris with Picasso. It’s an old story but it’s gaining more momentum now,” Unique Design X founder Morgan Morris Sans said.
Founded in 2019, Unique Design X is a nomadic platform dedicated to promoting collectible design, functional art and objects by artists with successful past editions in Paris, Moscow, Miami, Savannah, Shanghai and Riyadh. With support from France’s L’Institut Français d’Amérique Latine Unique Design X is committed to building a bilateral cultural bridge between Paris and now Mexico City.
Between Feb. 6 and 9, Unique Design X returned to the concurrent Material Art Fair for its second edition bringing with it 20 designers like Turkish artist Sema Topaloğlu, who is known for her glass creations showcased with Milanese platform Alcova in both Miami and Milan and Antwerp, and New York-based artist Marius Ritiu with the Ibiza-based Soleille Gallery and much more.
“We have 20 participants this year, and we have a lot of VIP program events around that, a lot of activations, performances, a pop-up bookshop, which is a collaboration between Casa Bosques, an incredible residency and local bookshop…and Apartamento Magazine,” she said, noting the showcase doubled its participation.
Across town in the volcanic fields of Jardines del Pedregal, where midcentury residential architecture flourished, the home of German architect and historian Max Cetto is a major hub for design.
On Tuesday, Milan-based carpet firm Cc-Tapis unveiled a new collection by New York-based designer Eny Lee Parker, presented together with Mexico City-based design retailer Studio 84. The exhibition, which runs until Saturday, also features iconic archival pieces from lighting firm Flos and Unno Gallery at the historic Casa-Estudio Max Cetto. Max Cetto was a German architect and historian who settled there in the mid-1900s and built houses in the volcanic Jardines del Pedregal.
Last year Studio 84 also made waves with Milan-based art dealer, curator and gallerist Nina Yashar and her gallery Nilufar, which took over the modernist home designed and lived in by the late acclaimed architect Pedro Ramírez Vázquez.
Situated in El Pedregal de San Angel, considered a design-forward enclave in the ’40s, the home is characterized by its impressive courtyard, volcanic stone and the seductive, contemporary furniture Vázquez designed, alongside the crucifixes, Madonnas and religious paintings of his wife Olga.
Yashar brought with her pieces from Nilufar’s Open Edition, ultra-high-end European designs that included the Necklace ceiling glass lamp by Milan’s Analogia Project; the Piero wall lamps by Copenhagen’s Vibeke Fonnesberg Schmidt; the Tenet and Mensa tables by Milanese designer Filippo Carandini; the Levitation Alchemia vases by Parisian architect Sophie Dries, and a selection of modular low-seating sofas, low tables and armchairs by design studio David/Nicolas, based in Lebanon, Italy and the U.S.
That exhibit also featured Cc-Tapis and stood as a testament to the rising importance of Zonamaco Mexico and its new generation of Mexican makers, brands, galleries and designers that offer a fresh perspective in the worlds of industrial and collectible design.
Zonamaco and the broader design fair scene in Mexico City have “truly flourished, attracting an increasingly international audience,” Yashar said. “It’s exciting to see European brands recognizing the value of showcasing there, understanding that engagement in person remains crucial — even in the digital age — to activate key markets and allow audiences to connect with pieces firsthand.”
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