1968 Student Movement posters go on display in Hermosillo
Original reporting: El Sol de Hermosillo
What happened
The Musas museum in Hermosillo opened an exhibition of 1968 Student Movement posters and related graphic works, which will remain on view through Oct. 25.
Reporting and context
A new exhibition at the Museum of Art of Sonora, known as Musas, presents posters and other graphic work from Mexico’s 1968 Student Movement. The exhibition, “Movimiento del 68: memoria, verdad y justicia,” opened Friday, Oct. 2, in Hermosillo. According to El Sol de Hermosillo, the display uses reproductions of original posters created by students at the National Autonomous University of Mexico for marches and street actions against state authoritarianism.
The exhibition places the posters within the political and artistic memory of a period when students demanded democracy and social justice. El Sol de Hermosillo reported that the works functioned as a form of counter-information in a media environment subordinated to presidential power. The display includes references to the “Gorilatos,” which represented repressive forces as gorillas to evoke the brutality and dehumanization attributed to military and police bodies.
The exhibition also includes student reinterpretations of the visual designs associated with the 1968 Mexico Olympics. Those works contrast the country’s official image with the reality of the period’s repressive government, while other pieces draw on the Taller de Gráfica Popular, comics and political cartoons. The exhibition will remain open through Sunday, Oct. 25, in the Musas lobby and on the first-floor corridor, where collage works incorporate images from the museum’s 1968 photographic archive.