The Proposal

American artist Jill Magid’s film traces the project for an exhibition inspired by Mexican architect Luis Barragàn’s work. She faced difficulties in consulting Barragàn’s archives, which are divided between Mexico City and Basel, especially with Federica Manco, who owns the Swiss archive, and the rights associated with the reproduction of Barragàn’s work. After numerous refusals, and following a residency in Barragàn’s home in Mexico City, where the private archive is kept, Magid’s exhibition project for the San Francisco Art Institute, scheduled for Autumn 2016, inevitably changed. The artist decided to display documents, letters, photographs and works related to the inaccessible Swiss archive, and to tell her story in a film. Built around the epistolary relationship with Federica Manco, The Proposal’s culminating moment is the exhumation of Barragàn’s ashes, from which Magid created a diamond to offer to her interlocutor in exchange for access to the archive. The story sparked an art world debate on the American artist’s ethics: is her work a necrophiliac outrage against Barragàn’s memory? Or a legitimate means to make the Mexican architect’s work accessible to the Mexican public and the world?