Olafur Eliasson, mentor and Sammy Baloji, protege (right).
Photo: Tina Ruisinger, courtesy Rolex.
More than 150 artists in the fields of visual art, music, architecture, theater, film, literature, and dance, including Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson and Pritzker Prize-winning architect Peter Zumthor, will convene in Mexico City this December to take part in Rolex Arts Weekend.
Held at the Centro Cultural del Bosque in Mexico City on December 5 and 6, the two-day event celebrates the completion of the 2014–2015 Rolex Mentor and Protege Arts Initiative, a philanthropic program that pairs artistic luminaries from various disciplines with emerging talents.
Now wrapping up its seventh edition, the initiative is designed to promote a year of creative exchange between mentors and proteges, who share the results of their collaboration with the public at the annual Arts Weekend.
The Venice gala at the 2013 Rolex Arts Weekend.
Photo: Rolex Arts Initiative.
This year’s event is curated by Joseph V. Melillo, executive producer of New York’s Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) in New York. In the spirit of the program, Melillo is teaming up with up-and-coming Mexico City curator Allegra Cordero di Montezemolo on the multi-disciplinary event.
Rebecca Irvin, head of philanthropy at Rolex, had high praise for Melillo. “The performances and presentations he has scheduled show the work of a truly creative mind, with cross-fertilization across artistic disciplines,” she said in a statement, “involving not only present but also past participants in the Rolex program.”
The eight theaters at the Centro Cultural del Bosque will likely each see packed houses for performances like what Eliasson and protege Sammy Baloji are calling an “immersive” photographic experience, a discussion between Booker Prize-winner Michael Ondaatje and protege Miroslav Penkov, and a keynote talk from Zumthor, who spent the year working with protege Gloria Cabral to design a tea chapel in South Korea.
Other highlights will include three original compositions by music protege Vasco Mendonça, as well as a piece by his mentor Kaija Saariaho, a Finnish composer, all performed by the Mexican group CEPROMUSIC. Former protege Susan Platts, a mezzo-soprano, will also sing Mendonça’s Boys of Summer.
The weekend will culminate with an open-to-the-public celebration held at the Julio Castillo Theater, during which the new mentors for the 2016–17 initiative will be announced.
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