(born in Mexico
City, 1970 Lives and works in Mexico City and Los Angeles)
Yoshua Okón’s work, like a series of near-sociological experiments
executed for the camera, blends staged situations, documentation and improvisation
and puts into question habitual perceptions of reality and truth, selfhood and
morality. For example, in Oríllese a la Orilla (1999), Okón convinced
cops to perform absurd tasks (twirling their nightsicks, dancing). In another
video-taped performance, Coyotería (2003), he re-enacted Joseph Beuys’
1974 cohabitation with a coyote by confining himself with a human “coyote”
hired to act like the canine coyote (“coyote” is Mexican slang for
the unsavory middlemen who facilitate interactions between the government and
civilians and who also smuggle migrants across the Mexico-US border). Okón
has shown his work at the Kunstwerke in Berlin, P.S.1-MoMA and the New Museum
in NY, the Istanbul Biennial, Galleria Francesca Kaufmann in Milan, The Project
in NY and Galería Enrique Guerrero in Mexico City amongst others. In
1994, he co-founded La Panadería, an independent space dedicated to the
exhibition and discussion of contemporary culture, a project which he directed
for 8 years. Since 2002, Okón has also been a visiting teacher at the
University of California, San Diego.