from the archive - miguel calderón

Neurotics Anonymous features a color photograph of white eggs arranged in the holes of a red grate. One egg stands out — larger and black, it disrupts the scene’s uniformity. Calderón captured the image during a film shoot at a bird sanctuary, drawn to the stark contrast, which evokes the phrase “the black sheep of the family.” Such subtle ruptures have long defined his work. From a young age, Calderón documented his surroundings, seeking out offbeat moments that often go unnoticed.

The images capture people whispering with companions in bars and restaurants, walking through quiet forests, and engaged in intimate exchanges — revealing the desires of a young artist intent on documenting both the mundane and the personal. As Calderón explains: “I think these images hold something worth preserving, and at the same time, they offer a way of seeing my other self: the present-day Miguel looking at the enthusiastic teenager who wanted to document everything, to dive into any situation that caught his attention, driven by an obsessive thirst for life.”[1]

These early photographs reflect a broader impulse in his practice: to document spaces of social interaction not merely as evidence, but as a means of preserving fleeting moments and framing them through a deeply personal lens. They also foreshadow the conceptual and visual concerns that will continue to shape his work. Ranging from seemingly casual to subtly staged, and from the ordinary to the uncanny, these images mark the emergence of ideas Calderón would later develop in more complex, layered ways— tracing a line from youthful curiosity to a mature, self-reflexive practice.

Among the many approaches that circulated at La Panadería, humor was embraced as a tool to critique, disrupt, and deflate the solemnity often associated with institutional art. In January 1998, Calderón exhibited Ridiculum Vitae, a 29.5 x 15.4 ft. carpet reproducing his résumé. During the opening, a woman dressed in the clichéd uniform of a domestic worker meticulously vacuumed as visitors walked across it. The irony was clear: no matter how spotless a résumé might be, it doesn’t illustrate depth or substance in the work of an artist.

At La Panadería, the work spoke for itself, fueling Calderón’s commitment to a practice that provokes and, at the same time, laughs at itself.

The title riffs on MUNAL’s “Piece of the Month” program, shifting focus from celebrated artworks to the often - unseen individuals who keep cultural institutions running. The piece also carries a layered irony: although the workers stepped away from their duties to parody the Museum’s collection, their vivid recollections of the artworks are striking — raising questions about who is entitled to interpret cultural heritage.

Threatened by the humor and subject matter, MUNAL considered removing the work from the exhibition. After lengthy negotiations, the photographs were ultimately included.

Calderón turns from disrupting dynamics at the workplace to leisurely afternoons with Chapultepec (2003). Over ten consecutive weekends, he visited Mexico City’s Chapultepec Park and asked picnicking groups to pose as if they were victims of an unidentified catastrophe. The resulting images depict a bucolic afternoon turned tragic — a distorted reality that, without explanation, unsettles viewers through its strangeness. As Calderón explains, the work is “about [the idea of] something that could be but isn’t, but once you do it, it becomes a reality. Of course, there’s a lot of humor in this work, even though it also speaks to the fragility in which we can all collapse at any given moment.” [2]

Calderón’s acute observational eye is drawn not only to humorous moments among groups in public spaces but also to the private lives of individuals — human or animal. Birds appear frequently in his work, a motif rooted in a formative adolescent experience when he traded his bicycle to a veterinarian for a hawk named Zeus. Caring for Zeus left a lasting impression and sparked a lifelong interest in falconry — the ancient art of training birds of prey— which has influenced several of his works, including Camaleón (2017).

Camaleón comprises a video installation featuring perches and objects used by falconers to transport their birds. The film follows a falconer over the course of twenty-four hours — a club bouncer by night who spends his days hunting with his falcon. He lives with the bird, a wolf, and a chihuahua, forming an unusual yet intimate domestic arrangement.

While walking through Mexico City in 2017, Calderón noticed smoke rising from the Cibeles Fountain. Upon approaching, he discovered that the fountain’s maintenance staff were operating a grill. Beyond caring for the structure, they used the space beneath it to rest, socialize, and even sleep. One of these workers would later become the protagonist of El placer después (2019).

Through a series of interviews, the man shared fragments of his daily life and personal history—some directly connected to the 2017 earthquake that struck Mexico City — which served as the basis for the video’s script. The work highlights Calderón’s ability to uncover intimate human stories and to find narrative depth in overlooked or mundane realities. At the same time, El placer después underscores the fluid boundary in Calderón's practice between documentary and fiction: although we cannot always be sure what is real, the film’s tone and intimacy compel us to believe it.

Calderón often plays with the ambiguity between artifice and authenticity to transform the everyday into narrative. In his most recent film, Cocteleros (2024) — currently on view in his exhibition Neurotics Anonymous at kurimanzutto New York — he blends realism and satire to portray a group of “cocteleros”: former journalists and cultural imposters who sneak into high-profile openings using false or expired credentials, in pursuit of free food and drink. Combining interviews, documentary footage, and staged scenes, Calderón reveals the absurd logic that governs their daily routines — lives so implausible they seem fictional.

As with the maintenance staff in El empleado del mes and El placer después, or the falconer in Camaleón, Calderón focuses in Cocteleros on socially marginalized figures. The humor serves as an entry point, drawing us into their tactics while subtly exposing the deeper, often unseen realities they navigate. What initially appears comedic is, in fact, rooted in structural inequality. The film becomes a critique of what society tends to dismiss or overlook, highlighting stark contrasts between access, exclusion, and visibility.