Antonio Vega Macotela

Antonio Macotela’s work is multidisciplinary, site-specific, and often engages particular communities such as prison inmates, soldiers, miners, etc. It explores notions of labor, value and exchange, specifically with regards to currency as a system through which social relations are established and negotiated. He addresses alienation in economic systems and its social structures. Macotela uses art as a tool for shifting and resignifying the meaning of everyday life as well as re-contextualizing it. His work can be understood both as a concrete engagement or form of activism, where his pieces come to have a real impact on people’s lives as well as at a metaphorical level, in which the metaphor emerges as the result of an action that affects a community.

The recipient of grant awards from the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation and the Mexican National Fund for Culture and Arts, he has had solo exhibitions in Mexico City at Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros and Casa Vecina. His work was included in the 29th São Paulo Biennial and The New Museum’s 2012 triennial, "The Ungovernables."

Courtesy of LABOR