A book will always be the most enduring gift that will always be welcome. To celebrate this season through the proven art of book gifting we prepared this LOCAL GUIDE of publications that you can get all over the CDMX.
From an etiquette manual on how to behave in the contemporary art world and an essay on the criminalization of protest, to a graphic novel and a collection of texts by furniture and interior designer Clara Porset, here are some suggestions for books to suit all possible tastes and budgets.
Manual of contemporary art style
Pablo Helguera
It documents the anecdotes, behind-the-scenes maneuvers and interactions that visual artist and writer Pablo Helguera observed in his work within the art world over the years. Using the traditional language of the etiquette manuals of yesteryear, it functions as a manual for understanding the contemporary art scene with an ironic and insightful look. Should one sleep with an artist whose work one doesn't like? What do you say to a good friend who exhibits horrible work? How do you move successfully at an opening? The book answers all these questions. It also includes dress codes, artist categories and power hierarchies.
For sale at EXIT.
Rosie in the jungle
Nathan Cowdry
British cartoonist Nathan Cowdry's first graphic novel is a black comedy set in the heart of the Amazon jungle in which Rosie, Denton (her codependent dog) and Tio Braga (talking calzones) go on an expedition to South America to smuggle drugs into the UK. The plot filled with critical events is a conversation with imperialism and how people interact with it. Throughout, Cowdry satirizes puritanical attitudes toward sex, guilt and shame. Rosie in the Jungle won the 2020 Puchi Award from Spanish publisher Fulgencio Pimentel in collaboration with La Casa Encendida.
On sale at Cafeleería.
Offended
Lucia Lijtmaer
How and why have we accepted the ridicule of the right to complain and all kinds of social protest? In this essential essay, writer and journalist Lucia Lijtmaer makes a media analysis in which she addresses the origin and evolution of concepts present in the current public conversation and their implications for the future of the debate: neopuritanism, lynching in social networks, cancellation culture, political correctness and incorrectness and, of course, the offended... that reactionary movement of the ultra-right in the face of the advances of feminism, anti-racism and lgbt militancy in recent years, and how that reactionary wave is reaching political power.
On sale at El Sótano
Life in art
Clara Porset
Clara Porset is a fundamental figure of modern industrial design in Mexico, and her contribution is unparalleled. In addition to her professional career as a designer, interior designer, curator and teacher, she was also a writer and researcher. Between 1930 and 1965 she published in specialized media in Cuba, the United States and Mexico, and developed an arduous task of criticism focused on design, its essence, development and scope. This anthology edited by Ana Elena Mallet and published by Alias Editorial, represents the result of a process of compiling all the texts in which Porset questioned the state of design and its evolution.
On sale at Casa Bosques.
Exposed
Oivia Sudjic Gandhi
"The more I read the women I admire, the more I think of anxiety as a dual force that seems essential not only to living, but also to creativity" says Olivia Sudjic in this less than one hundred page essay that dissects the multi-layered web of anxieties particular to the age in which we currently live. After the release of her first book, Sudjic had an episode of deep anxiety and began to contemplate the risks associated with writing (or any kind of artistic creation) and self-exposure, and wrote this essay in order to continue working without having to limit her voice, without succumbing to the external eye, the weight of history and the imposed canon in a hyper-masculinized world.
For sale at Gandhi.
The work of the eyes
Mercedes Halfon
The story begins when the protagonist's ophthalmologist dies and this leads to a journey through her family ties, Mercedes' problems with her own vision and how these have conditioned her relationship with her work as a writer, journalist and theater critic. It is an unclassifiable book, fragmentary and elusive of genres; a hybrid between autofiction novel, chronicle and essay in which she reviews some moments in the history of ophthalmology, but there are also intimate family records, from her childhood diagnosis of inherited strabismus to the uncertainty of the birth of her own son.
On sale at La Polilla.
Muxelandia
María Elena Valdés and Renata Juárez Huerdo
"Muxelandia is the platonic idea of freedom that is born through the eye of photographer María Elena Valdés, who captures in a detailed and colorful way the everyday, beautiful and diverse of Juchitán, Oaxaca". This photobook seeks to promote, through image and essay, the inclusion of non-binary practices. The muxes are transgender, indigenous and Zapotec women (or third gender individuals) who have existed for centuries.
For sale at Casa Bosques.
The promise of happiness
Sara Ahmed
This explicitly feminist, anti-racist, and queer analysis traces the genealogy of happiness, identifies its philosophical basis, and provides a synthesis of its social and cultural origins. Sara Ahmed presents a critique of how happiness is created and employed, and how its affective characterization has become normative for some and oppressive for others. The book moves through what Ahmed calls an "archive of happiness," composed of novels, philosophical treatises, films, and dystopian visions that deal in some way with happiness. His focus is on the way it is used as a means of social control, its implications in the West and, consequently, to the rest of the world through globalization.
For sale at Casa Tomada.
The optic nerve
Maria Gainza
Part memoir, part art critic and part novel, Optic Nerve tells the story of María, an art historian (like the book's author) who tries to escape from a "neurotic lethargy" of the Argentine upper class. One of the main ways she escapes is by observing: the chapters describe her encounters with paintings in local museums. Much of the text is devoted to their reflections on the art and concerns of the artists that prompted them to do the work they did. The book is composed of independent, self-contained chapters that resemble short stories or essays. There is no plot, only reflections on life, family, friends and, above all, art, which Gainza interweaves with great skill.
For sale at La increíble.
Death in their hands
Ottessa Moshfegh
Vesta Gul is a seventy-year-old widow who lives in a cabin in rural Maine with her dog Charlie. At the beginning of the novel Vesta finds a handwritten note that reads, "Her name was Magda. No one will ever know who killed her. It wasn't me. Here is her corpse." The note gradually takes over Vesta's life, and her obsession to piece together the mystery of who wrote the note, who Magda was, and what happened to her. In each of her novels, Moshfegh investigates what happens to a woman cut off from the world through her own choice, even when that choice is dictated by someone else's wrongdoing. This is the portrait of Vesta, a person who tries not to lose her mind using the mock murder mystery.
For sale at El Péndulo.