countercurrent

interviews   about

LAVA Mexico City



 In recent years, the “ecological turn” has surfaced across many forms of art practice. As a curatorial platform, LAVA approaches this shift with fluidity—operating nomadically, moving beyond the structures of institutions and galleries, and grounding its work in sustained care and transdisciplinary dialogue. Founded by curator Adriana Flores in Mexico City in 2023, LAVA grew out of her personal research into multispecies relations, environmental justice, and more-than-human times—themes not introduced by contemporary discourses alone, but rooted in ancestral knowledge. 

I first visited LAVA’s exhibition Corteza Líquida during Mexico City Art Week 2025. Upon entering the gallery space, I was met with a pungent, vinegar-like smell rising from water tanks filled with SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast). That bodily immediacy of scent acts as a reminder that our relationship with the surroundings is not only visual but sensorial—a thread running through Lava’s exhibitions, where research becomes something felt and embodied.

A month after the Art Week, Adriana and I spoke about the inspirations behind Lava’s curatorial focus, the ethics of cultural work, and the practical realities of running an independent platform. Throughout the conversation, Adriana frequently returned to the notion of “language”—if the ways of understanding the world are themselves forms of language, how do we exchange them, and what more might we learn through sharing situated perception?






Adriana Flores, Yindi Chen, March 19, 2025

Yindi    

What inspired you to start LAVA? Why did you choose a nomadic approach to curating with the platform?

Adriana    

It took a long time for LAVA to be born. I’m an independent curator with a background in art history and began curating in an informal way, since doing a master’s degree in curatorial or cultural studies was uncommon in Mexico about 9 years ago. I wanted to define a line of research that genuinely resonated with my sensibilities and personal interests—something worth developing through practice. So I needed to look inward and identify what I truly wanted to build my research around.
        After working in several galleries, I realized I wasn’t passionate about that structure. But I couldn’t commit to maintaining a physical space in Mexico City because the rent is too expensive, so I decided to create a nomadic platform—one that would allow me to organize exhibitions without the financial pressure of sustaining a permanent venue.
       LAVA emerged in 2023 as a platform to ground my research interests. Fortunately, I was invited to collaborate with other projects in both Mexico City and Querétaro. It was exciting, challenging, and exhausting—especially because I was doing everything myself: thinking, writing, curating, installing, and coordinating with artists and galleries. The first year was intense, and I was also trying to understand how a proposal at the intersection of contemporary art and Earth sciences could take shape. I was always interested in exploring how a curatorial project could cultivate critical and sensitive thinking, and formulate meaningful questions around climate justice.

Yindi    

Why did you name the platform after the symbol of volcano?

Adriana    

Beyond being a fascinating natural entity, lava became a reference charged with personal meaning. It carried elements that reminded me of my grandparents—their direct relationship to working the soil as campesinos, and fire as a force that brings people together—both of which felt deeply transformative to me. From there, I became interested in how ancestral forces converge in the volcano. These geological bodies offered a way to situate the climate crisis in relation to contemporary art practices, underscoring the urgency of engaging with these pressing matters. 

Yindi    

Could you talk a bit more about how your upbringing and background have shaped your notion of nature, particularly in your curatorial practice?

Adriana    

The knowledge my grandparents shared can be traced in the ways they understood the cycles of the Earth. When I speak about deep time, the climate crisis, or symbiotic life, I still find myself asking how these concepts are activated in practice. How can these words create agency around urgent issues through art? 
       It was challenging for me to understand nature as both an agent and a living entity—something with its own voice. This kind of perception shifted during a writing workshop with Mónica Nepote, where she invited participants to write a piece of fiction as if natural elements had their own voice. I often return to writers like Ursula K. Le Guin, Ailton Krenak, Donna Haraway, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, and Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui. They’ve been important in helping me think through the anthropological implications of the narratives that create distance between the human, more-than-human and posthuman forms of life—from minerals to bacteria to plants—all of us existing within the same distressed ecosystem.
        For me, curatorial practice is an exercise. It's never finished, and it’s not like there is a fixed method that I can follow. I did not learn it through academic institutions, but through understanding how curatorial practice can be formed through ways of thinking.

Yindi    

What kinds of writing are you interested in doing beyond the relatively formatted curatorial texts?

Adriana    

Writing grounds my curatorial practice because it can take many forms, yet it only comes into focus once ideas are articulated through language. Fiction opens a space for imagination, as I’m not interested in approaching my work solely from a historical perspective. Fictional writing, for me, is also an exercise. I remember being struck when I first encountered the short stories and novels by Le Guin and Cristina Rivera Garza—I hadn’t realized it was possible to conceive of living entities in such a way. I’m also drawn to writing that moves toward poetry, where boundaries loosen and fixed structures dissolve. 
        It is also important to acknowledge the influence of relational practice. I found it meaningful to understand how they can function as a methodology—through acts like sharing food. In this sense, socializing itself becomes a relational practice, shifting the focus away from producing objects and toward creating situations, encounters, and shared experiences.

Yindi    

How do ideas of care—both relational and ecological—inform the way you work with collaborators at LAVA?

Adriana    

If we are working with an artist in a project space, we should be attentive to the relationships we build and the way we relate to each other. That’s also why I wanted to create my own platform—because within galleries there are always hierarchies and a whole system in place.
        In LAVA’s second year, my friend and curator fernanda ramos joined the project as an associate curator. We wanted to move away from traditional hierarchical curatorial roles, so we worked with artists we admired and project-spaces we met throughout 2024 and early 2025. Many of these collaborations eventually grew into close, ongoing relationships.
        We prioritized ethical relationships, allowing closeness to grow through collaboration. This was central to what we wanted to put into practice. It was never only about producing exhibitions; it was about working together, listening, and engaging in honest dialogue. At times, it can be difficult to say, “I don’t agree,” or “I don’t see it that way,” while still respecting differing perspectives. Learning to work in this way has been an ongoing process—one grounded in ethics, respect, and a commitment to dignifying the labor of both curators and artists. It is not about extracting value from someone’s work or placing our names above it.

Yindi    

It's important to respect not just artists, but other collaborators you work with. And from the beginning, you chose to work under the name LAVA as a platform, rather than presenting everything under your own name.

Adriana    

Bringing LAVA’s projects to life has always involved a great deal of collective effort, and acknowledging everyone who’s involved in that labor feels essential.
        Our focus on exhibitions so far has been shaped by the networks and spaces we already have access to. Yet I believe artistic practice needs to be cross-disciplinary, as the social and ecological challenges we face cannot be addressed through art alone. Within these limitations, art can operate as a space for reflection, imagination, and experimentation. Engaging with our relationship to the environment—and with practices of care for other living ecosystems—requires recognizing that the human condition is only one among many forms of life. This shift in perspective feels especially urgent in the current moment.

Yindi    

I wonder if you have collaborated with other practitioners who are not from the art field and can offer knowledge from different disciplines.

Adriana    

For Sangre y Savia, Lava’s first show, I invited writer Monica Nepote to take part in the public program. This was especially meaningful, as she helped reframe the relationship with the non-human through a workshop centered on imagining how natural elements might speak if they could use our language to express themselves—an approach she also develops in her writings on plant thinking. 
       I’m really interested in the relationship between art and science, so the show Corteza Líquida became an opportunity to learn how microorganisms work and to get closer to a biologist’s way of seeing. For the next exhibition at Museo Universitario del Chopo, I’m planning to work with the mineral collection at the Museo de Geología and open an approach to geology. 

Yindi    

What is your mode of collaboration with other spaces? 

Adriana    

All of our exhibitions have taken place at different venues. Some were invitation-based, while others emerged from approaching spaces directly and proposing projects. We have collaborated with independent spaces in Mexico city such as Studio Croma, Compás 88, and Islera, as well as with artist-run project spaces such as laNao, and guadalajara90210 and Trámite Buró de Coleccionistas in Querétaro. We remain open to receiving invitations for curatorial projects, workshops, and residencies. This year, we were very excited to receive an invitation from the Museo Universitario del Chopo to develop a project for El gabinete, a vitrine space within the museum.

Yindi    

After a few years with LAVA, do you still keep the same aspiration as before?

Adriana    

At the moment, I’m interested in long-term research projects that allow me to experiment with different curatorial outcomes, including performative and pedagogical initiatives, as well as editorial and writing projects. I am also eager to collaborate with Latin American artists beyond Mexico and to develop residency projects that can nurture and expand the past two years of sustained curatorial work within LAVA.

Yindi    

How does the funding system work in Mexico, and how does LAVA sustain its projects within that context?

Adriana    

I would say that Latin America operates within a very different funding dynamic compared to Europe and the United States. Public cultural funding has been significantly reduced following recent political changes. While LAVA has been fortunate to receive support for two exhibitions, the amounts were modest. As a result, we have had to adapt by combining limited public funding with private support.

Yindi    

How do you see the current conditions for independent art spaces in Mexico City today?

Adriana    

For me, LAVA is navigating independence by remaining nomadic. Some younger artists have told me our project inspired them to realize they don’t need a fixed space. Independent projects are evolving, partly in response to the pandemic, which expanded how we collaborate outside traditional venues. It’s a challenging moment—some independent spaces have transitioned into institutions as artists gain gallery representation, reflecting a generational shift. Today, truly independent spaces are rare and often hard to track.

Yindi    

Are there any art spaces around the world that you particularly like or would recommend we look into?

Adriana    

A collective initiative I admire is Opcit, an organization offering residencies and presenting research-based projects. Islera is run by women and exclusively showcases works by female artists. Lolita Pank engages with a broader understanding of artistic practices through educational accompaniment. Proyecto Parutz in Guatemala focuses on food sovereignty, and Virreina in Colombia provides residency programs for emerging artists. 

©countercurrent 2025