Art, Antiques, and Warmth in Mexico City

Zona Maco, 2020. *All photographs courtesy of Zona Maco, Mexico City*.

After a one-year hiatus, the art fair Zona Maco is back for its eighteenth edition, at the Centro Citibanamex convention center in Mexico City’s Lomas de Sotelo neighborhood. Billed as the largest art fair in Latin America, the five-day affair (“Zona” is Spanish for “zone,” and “Maco” stands for “México arte contemporáneo”) has, since 2020, embraced four separate fairs that formerly took place at different times during the year. These include the eponymous contemporary art fair, a design section founded in 2011, a section devoted to photography added in 2015, and an antiques-focused section called Salón.

2022 marks the first year that Salón will have its own curator, Alfonso Miranda, director of billionaire Carlos Slim’s network of Soumaya museums in Mexico City. It’s a crucial moment for antiques, Miranda says, since, “because of Covid we’ve been in our houses, surrounded by objects, and . . . it’s [become] very important to discover the meaning of these objects, through [dialogues between] the past and the present and the future” that a venue like Zona Maco can offer. Selected based on the quality of their offerings, the eleven dealers participating in Salón this year include a handful that are based in Mexico City, as well as international dealers Safra (from Miami) and Muzeion (Dallas). Rounding out the field is Mario Uvence Antiques and Fine Arts—of the Guatemala-bordering Mexican state of Chiapas—which adds a dash of regional flavor to the mix.

Below please find a selection of our favorite objects to be on offer at the 2022 edition of Zona Maco Salón, February 9–13.