The Gorrita Azul Awards

The Gorrita Azul Awards kick off their second edition to give visibility to contemporary Mexican art

Mexico City, Jan 22 (EFE).- The Gorrita Azul Awards began as a “joke” on social media, but now, in their second edition with a professional jury, the awards that recognize Mexican artistic and cultural talent have become an opportunity to give “visibility” to current national creators, said their director, Mario García Torres, on Wednesday.

“The objective of the awards is precisely to give more visibility to people who are working in Mexico (...) here we have a lot of people working hard and with a very small budget and very little visibility,” acknowledged the visual creator at the Jumex Museum, one of the symbols of contemporary art in Mexico City.

García explained in a press conference that, in addition to the public vote, to “formalize” the blue award there will be a professional jury.

Some of them will be members from last year, including the curator of Latin American Art at the Tate Modern (London), Tobias Ostrander; the director of the Isabel and Agustín Coppel Collection (CIAC), Magnolia de la Garza, and the curator Alejandro Romero.

“This jury has been with us since the last edition. Thinking about this new one, I thought it was important that some of them repeat their work in this version and thus think in perspective and in the history of the awards,” he stressed.

New members of the jury

The curator and director of the Tono Festival, Samantha Ozer, is added to this list of professionals, as well as the contemporary artists Fernando Gress and Alicia Valladares, who received the Gorrita Azul Award in the category of curator of the year in 2024.

"I had never been recognized as an artist in an alternative space, which are often spaces that struggle a lot to appear and compete with galleries and institutions, but we artists continue to work there," said Valladares about her involvement in this award.

The curator considered that "La Gorrita (Azul) gives the community this recognition that is lacking, it encourages them, it motivates them to work harder every year."

Likewise, her colleague Gress highlighted that with these awards, it is possible to "expand the radar of artists in the country, beyond the local scene in Mexico City."

"Seeing what they are doing in Tijuana, in Yucatan, in the states, everywhere, including these more alternative spaces is also the purpose," she added.

The next nominations

In that same spirit towards expansion and diversity, García commented that this is why La Gorrita Azul has 13 nomination categories, in this way they "support each other" to have a large number of distinctions.

“There are many awards in the world and there is always only one winner (...) Here when we are faced with the problem of how to maintain the art scene by supporting each other and expanding it, we did not need one award, one icon that was present in the media, but rather the most that we could do,” he explained.

García announced that on February 9 the nominees of this latest edition will be revealed at the Soho House, as in the previous version, and it will be on the 10th of the same month when these names will be published on the Gorrita Azul Awards website for the general vote. EFE
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