David Medalla: In Conversation with the Cosmos
A short review of the archival displays in a exhibition that will perpetually reverberate
The photographs used throughout the following text were taken by Amurmur at David Medalla: En Conversación con el Cosmos (Museo Tamayo, February 2025.) All quotes are from David Medalla: In Conversation with the Cosmos (DelMonico Books, edited by Aram Moshayedi.)
“In what ways can artists be present when they are no longer present in body, when only the objects they made remain: how can they continue to exert a spiritual, a creative, an emancipatory force?” (Guy Brett, Exploding Galaxies: The Art of David Medalla)
This exhibition was experienced on the 16th of February 2025 at the Museo Tamayo in Mexico City. This is a reworked journal entry, edited October 2025. The effect of this collection has become indelible to the day-tripper.
It seems anyone who knew David Medalla (23 March 1942-28 December 2020) considered the effect of him to be unfading: all biographical texts written about him point to the extraordinaries of the artist concerned as his creative atoms are carried in perpetuity by the person who experienced him. David Medalla: In Conversation with the Cosmos, first opening at the Hammer Museum (June 9th-September 15th 2024) and curated by Aram Moshayedi and Nyah Ginwright is more than an ode to this exceptional artist. It is an anthem for his wonderful behaviours and misbehaviours. The displays operate as entryways to the tremendous bends in the archive he left behind. In the forward for the accompanying publication by the same name (2024, published by DelMonico Books and edited by Aram Moshayedi,) Ann Philbin, director of the Hammer Museum, recounts the beginnings of the curatorial aspect and with kind anecdotes she softly narrates the ignition of the exhibition research and curatorial process, setting the scene for the essence of the experience.
“The exhibition is archival in nature, meaning that it constructs a historical context for thinking about the artist’s body of work. Without David’s physical presence or direction, it would be brazen to assume it is possible to recreate the experience of his art - which was elusive, immaterial and fleeting even while he was actively producing it. Instead, the exhibition constructs a portrait of an artist who never comes fully into focus. [...] I am grateful to the lenders for temporarily parting with their cherished objets and thus providing an opportunity for audiences to experience firsthand the artist’s curious trajectories and self-described “cosmic propulsions.”
Medalla was many, many things. The way he moved through the world was beguiling. David the lover, friend, artist and political activist. David Medalla was beautiful in who and how he was during his living but also through the magic he laid down and parted with. The robust of his artistic legacy lies in his bits and pieces and the way, still today, they help us understand his own “exploding galaxies” whilst keeping the qualities of the “mass participation propulsions” he organised. In his view, every participant’s creative energy could be a catalyst for the “transformation of society.” Time spent amongst his things, his words, the mummified energy that emanates from his creations offers a self-explanatory guide-book on how to be a fulminating version of yourself.
“Undoubtly, Medalla captured that fleeting, magical moment of the kind that matters only to the individual but he always transfigured it into an experience relevant to others too.” (Magalí Arriola, And then, and then, and then… David Medalla: A short tale about a flower, a letter, an egg, a monkey and an artist.) Medalla’s alter-ego was a monkey, one who had the “ability to somersault through space and time, transcending social, cultural and historical borders.” (Magalí Arriola) David Medalla: In Conversation with the Cosmos is proof of the extent with which Medalla let his historical journeying bleed into his own understanding of societal barriers as well as the surrogate ways of reckoning with them. “In Voyages and Somersaults Medalla performed wearing a mask while weaving together spoken anecdotes and allusions to his personal and artistic universe: the connection between the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan and the artist’s native Philipines; an improbable meeting between Renaissance painters Antonello da Messina and Giorgione di Castelfranco; and the interplay between James Dean and a toy monkey.” (Magalí Arriola) As fanciful as these meetings may sound, their coming to life within the records of his work and output untangles the ghosts of creative isolation within each exhibition visitor. A wandering guest at the exhibition finds themselves peering at Mondrian’s shorts and becomes a dynamic participant for David Medalla’s constant explosions. Once away from the displays, the visitor contends with the overwhelming feelings of familiarity within the experience, and for months following, will carry the lust for life and connections Medalla encouraged and fuelled. The curators of the exhibition itself and the beautiful texts in the accompanying publication all share a similar opinion on their trying to trace a reasoned trajectory within his life voyage: “This multivalence presents a challenge for anyone writing about Medalla, which Rasheed Araeen likened to putting an elephant in a cage.” (CJ Salapare, What the Wind Carries)
The entirety exhibition looks back at us as we remember David Medalla through his ever extending body of work. Somewhere, unlost within the archive of his life are a refuge of odes and nods to impressions and admiration for a profusion of characters alive at a time before his own. “This artistic biography is peppered with names like Arthur Rimbaud, Piet Mondrian, Constantin Brâncuși, Vladimir Tatlin and Kazimir Malevich. In clipped and collaged photographs of their faces, poems dedicated to their memories, ritual actions performed for a camera at their graves and monuments, and in many other instances, he dedicated himself to the legacies of his intellectual crushes. With these historical figures, he had lively imaginary conversations that were similar to the ones he shared in real life with his contemporaries. […] In documents and artworks, Medalla’s contradictory biography emerges through the names and faces that captured his attention, as different as they often were from his own.” (Aram Moshayedi, A Love That Leaves No Traces)
The glaring success of this exhibition lies in its aftermath. Its ingestion and digestion, however immediate or stretched out, renders our otherwise undiscovered affinity with David Medalla palpable. His existence, whether its time-frame or his innumerable loud and quiet successes, are all proof of the value in integrating all winds of experience in order to engage in the most human form of collective change. Though we are no longer able to experience Medella in person, our experience of his person blazes within his legacy: objects, diaries, photographs, masks, manifestos, kinetic sculptures, poems, drawings and countless breaths of fresh air.
What has David Medalla given us?
A life’s work; an ongoing case of vertigo; trails of fragments; an incomplete history; an archive befitting the artist’s anti-institutional leanings; an example of resourcefulness in the face of ascriptive conditions - economic, racial, sexual, and otherwise; a case of Peter Pan syndrome; a baron in the trees; a limiting case in art history; a dead end to be enlivened; an ongoing philosophy on the mutability of form; a primer on identity’s flux and fixity; a manifesto on the liberty of imagination; a modern-day oral tradition (anyone who knew him personally will regale you with a tale or two); parables of friendship (and friction) amounting to a life made, lived and told.
— CJ Salapare, What the Wind Carries
CJ Salapare, What the Wind Carries (DelMonico Books, 2024. Edited by Aram Moshayedi)
David Medalla: En Conversación con el Cosmos left a curious trace on its viewers. Even though the journaling visitor has yet to meet another someone who witnessed this exhibition, they know the scope of its effect. At first, objects owned by someone, and those created by that same person, may seem to be a signature of their exploits on earth. But this is all a manoeuvre: David Medalla, over there but no longer here, won’t ever stop exploding. You’re led to believe you can feel it most when you’re around his artefacts. The monkey encourages us to observe the reverberations of these rumblings, and do the same: erupt, together this time. With David, within yourselves and for everyone else.
