Andrés Montes — FRONTERA, Cabaré Brutal #4, Festival Novas Frequências, Rio de Janeiro, 2022

Andrés Montes

FRONTERA · Cabaré Brutal #4
Festival Novas Frequências
Rio de Janeiro · 2022
Obra / Work
Caligramas
Caligramas I, III, IV
2010 · Graphite on Japanese paper · 64×97cm
A phrase repeated until it traces the outline of a house. The text is the architecture. The architecture announces departure.
Practice Makes Perfect
Practice Makes Perfect
2008 · Graphite and embroidery on found paper · 9 pieces, 18.5×14.5cm
Learned to embroider. Repeated until the hand knew what the mind was asking.
YOSOY
LOCUS / YOSOY
2013 · Wall intervention · Graphite and wood · 425×165cm
The palindrome in enormous letters on the wall. Branches placed before it. A claim and its echo.
IT TAKES TIME
IT TAKES TIME
2014 · Graphite on wall + red neon · 640×115cm · Cruce Contemporáneo, Madrid
Written in small lines of graphite. The lights went red. Then it was erased. The erasure was a different piece.
Una Idea de la Historia
Una Idea de la Historia
15 January 2015 · Cruce Contemporáneo, Madrid
The exhibition was not closed — it was annulled. Poetry, music, an erasure. The night was dedicated to the memory of Salomé Ramírez, who had died between opening and closing.
Estrategias
Estrategias para la construcción de una morada, de una barricada, de un refugio
2017 · Espacio Theredom, Madrid
Home — crossed out. Barricade — crossed out. What remains is refuge. Five invited artists occupied the space. The show never arrived at completion.
Welcome Home
Welcome Home
2009 · Video · Montseny residency, Catalonia
Walking feet into position. Together they form the shape of a house. White pigment traces the outline. The body as blueprint.
Tácticas de Identidad
Tácticas de Identidad
2011–2013 · Slide projector, photographic archive · Las Rozas / Galileo / Instituto de México
The figure multiplied, attempting to delimit personal space outdoors. Constructing a locus from zero, condemned to failure.
Regiones Transitorias
Regiones Transitorias
2011 · Video triptych · Helsinki metro station
Kneeling on a metro platform. Arranging soil inside a wooden frame. Three loops. The earth brought from outside, dispersed by footfall.
[W]Holehouse
[W]Holehouse
2012 · Rural intervention, video · Rural Contemporánea, Villanueva de los Infantes
Digging a house-shaped hole in red earth with bare hands. The house as excavation.
Transposed Displaced Transplanted
Transposed Displaced Transplanted
2012 · Diptych, digital prints · Rural Contemporánea
Two geographies, 1m² of earth exchanged between them. Both landscapes now carry foreign soil. La poética del desplazamiento.
Territorialidades (Iceberg)
Territorialidades (Iceberg)
2013 · Installation, found objects, text · Madrid
A bare bulb, two photographs of glaciers, a poem on the wall. A piece you lean into to read. Most of it below the surface.
Expansiones Nómadas
Expansiones Nómadas
2015 · Performance · Abierto en Acción, Jaén
An investigation into the processes of territory construction, memory, identity, and the politicization of space.
HERE
HERE
2013 · Installation · Digital prints, fan · 325×165cm
Photographs of a found huizache arranged to spell the word HERE. Animated by a fan. The place name as the place itself.
UNELMA
Wordactions — UNELMA (Dream)
2013 · Urban intervention with salt · Helsinki Senate Square
Salt poured to spell the Finnish word for dream in the plaza before the Senate. Weather took it. The city walked through it.
Wordactions Berlin
Wordactions — Berlin / Nijmegen
2014–2015 · Urban interventions · Berlin and Nijmegen
SOMEWHERE. HÖREN. ELSEWHERE. WE'LL OPEN A PATH. Language as a spatial action across cities and languages.
Erased Banners
Erased Banners / Revolutionary Aesthetics
2016–2019 · Ongoing series · Athens, Madrid, Porto
Found political banners, erased. Repainted, erased again. In Porto, a bedsheet painted over and over until the language became texture. Não há nova criação sem destruição.
Anecdotario Breve
Anecdotario Breve
2016–2018 · Video installation · Madrid / Las Cigarreras, Gijón
Ten narcocorridos syntactically deconstructed. Every noun, verb, and adjective removed. What remains is the connective tissue of the language.
Monumental
Monumental
2015 · Video · Found flags, Berlin
Flags found flying in Berlin, filmed. No context. No nation identified. The flag as gesture, detached from what it claims.
Verkauf
One Red Flag (Verkauf)
2015 · Found fabric and wood · GlogauAIR / Institut für Alles Mögliche, Berlin
A found rag. A long stick. Both had sat on the studio floor for months. Sustaining the rag against the wall with the stick was enough. People told me many things they thought it meant.
FLAG
FLAG
2016 · Found fabric, wood · Proyectos Maquis, Izmir, Turkey
Red fabric. The word FLAG. Sustained by many sticks. In a country where the flag is venerated. They are a flagpole because I say so.
Lokma Dogma
Lokma Dogma
2016 · Public performance · Izmir · Emergency Index Vol. 6
Distributing lokma — the Turkish sweet given for the souls of the dead — while carrying a scrolling LED: ÇALIŞ BABAN GİBİ. OLMA BABAN GİBİ. A memorial photo of Andrés Montes Sr., 1950–1991.
PATRIA
PATRIA
2017 · Duration performance · Fonlad Festival, Coimbra
If you have a scheduled time to perform, it is not performance — it is theater. Carried a rock the whole day. When the scheduled time arrived, dropped it without announcement. People found only a rock.
BANDERA/CENOTE
BANDERA/CENOTE
2018 · Photography · 258×450cm · Unshown
A Mexican flag with a cenote at its center. The hole doesn't move with the fabric. Made to be seen, not exhibited.
La Luta
La Luta
2020 · Installation · Galeria do Sol, Porto
EU S OU. A serape suspended diagonally from ceiling to floor, anchored by a stone. Text by Javier Pérez Aranda.
Mil Vezes
Mil Vezes
2026 · Performance installation · Sismógrafo, Porto
An autobiographical story in portuñol, recorded live three times onto three walkmans. Three versions playing simultaneously, out of phase, contaminating each other until the language loses its shape.
Por Venir
Por Venir / No Hay Porvenir
31 October 2024 · CRUCE, Madrid · 30 Aniversario
A reading that could be understood as an underline beneath the word porvenir, or a note in the margins of a 1997 book about the future — in this twenty-twenty-four.
En Tránsito
En Tránsito — Historias Migrantes
February 2025 · Madrid Metro Line 2 · Art Madrid'25
A handmade speaker box on a trolley, playing recorded migrant stories, left unattended at metro stations. An ambulant archive. A device that transforms the metro into a container of memory.
Escritos / Writing
Ensayo-Crónica
Sobre mí
2016 · Izmir
En Berlín me di cuenta de que algo misterioso se esconde en los periódicos. Recuerdo la Colonia Libertad de Tijuana de noche, que hacía mucho frío. También caminé 17 días junto al Mar Cantábrico. Y otra vez que caminé de El Limón a Guamúchil, eso fue mucho antes. Me llamo Andrés Montes y soy uno de los que piensa que somos la historia que nos contamos, ergo, somos ficción. Juego con tierra. Un hijo. Son las cinco de la mañana.
Guión performático
Por Venir / No Hay Porvenir
2024 · CRUCE, Madrid
Five parts. The text stripped to punctuation, rebuilt word by word, then drowned by drums in crescendo until total noise. The last line landing each time: por venir, no hay porvenir. The voice goes silent. The page falls to the floor. The drums finish their last phrase.
Guión performático
FRONTERA
2022 · Cabaré Brutal #4 / Festival Novas Frequências, Rio de Janeiro
Same structure, three years earlier. A theoretical definition of the border, stripped and rebuilt five times while the drums fight to swallow the voice. La frontera no es inocente.
Ensayo
Territorio como signo: Acciones mínimas en la producción del espacio
En curso
De Certeau, Heidegger, Fischer-Lichte. The minimum gestures through which space becomes territory. Somos la historia que nos contamos, ergo, somos ficción.
Poesía
Regiones Transitorias
1997–2018 · Manuscript, 16 poems + prose
The manuscript that gives its title to the video, to the early practice, to the transit between places and languages. Complete. Waiting.
Publicación
Cantártica
2011– · Revista de creación
Un acto de comisariado artístico. Un espacio habitado temporalmente. Por lobos errantes que recorren el iceberg.
Sobre / About

En Berlín me di cuenta de que algo misterioso se esconde en los periódicos. Recuerdo la Colonia Libertad de Tijuana de noche, que hacía mucho frío. También caminé 17 días junto al Mar Cantábrico. Y otra vez que caminé de El Limón a Guamúchil, eso fue mucho antes. Me llamo Andrés Montes y soy uno de los que piensa que somos la historia que nos contamos, ergo, somos ficción. Juego con tierra. Un hijo. Son las cinco de la mañana.

Multidisciplinary artist born in Mexico, based in Porto. Work across performance, installation, video, spatial intervention, and writing. Shown in Madrid, Berlin, Helsinki, Athens, New York, Boston, Izmir, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, and Mexico City.

Collaborations with Raqs Media Collective, Cabaré Brutal, PLANCTON, Institut für Alles Mögliche. Texts by Daniel Lesmes, Carlos Delgado Mayordomo, Javier Pérez Aranda. Published in Emergency Index Vol. 6 and Poéticas del desplazamiento (Universidad de Murcia).