My Conversations with Barragán: An Exhibition by Martirene Alcántara
My Conversations with Barragán is a photography installation by Mexican-American visual artist Martirene Alcántara at the Mexican Cultural Institute. The exhibition explores Luis Barragán’s architecture through perception, memory, and emotion, treating his spaces not merely as structures to document but as experiences shaped by light, color, geometry, rhythm, shadow, reflection, and silence.
Alcántara’s photographs focus on details that might otherwise go unnoticed, transforming walls, windows, fragments of color, and fleeting light into meditative abstractions and personal visual experiences. Her long-term engagement with Barragán’s work considers how architecture can move beyond the physical and become emotional, sensory, and poetic.
When: September 4–December 5, 2026
Schedule: The page lists the exhibition from 10:00 a.m. on September 4 through 4:00 p.m. on December 5. The Mexican Cultural Institute’s visiting hours are Monday through Friday, 10:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m., and Saturday, 12:00–4:00 p.m.
Venue: Mexican Cultural Institute, 2829 16th St NW, Washington, D.C. 20009
Tickets: Price not available
Artist: Martirene Alcántara is a Mexican-American visual artist whose practice combines photography with painterly abstraction. Born in Mexico City to fine-art painters Ernesto Alcántara and Irma Grizá, she developed an early interest in color, composition, and visual storytelling. She studied architecture, fine arts, and photography, bringing those disciplines together in an approach that emphasizes light, shadow, rhythm, and visual structure.
Artist background: Alcántara began working professionally as a photographer in 1992, undertaking independent, editorial, and advertising projects internationally. Her photographs have appeared in architectural and cultural publications, gallery exhibitions, and museum presentations. The Museum of Modern Art holds four of her works in its permanent collection.
Artistic approach: Influenced by her family’s painting tradition as well as the minimalism of Kazimir Malevich and the experimental forms of Aleksandr Rodchenko, Alcántara uses color to create emotional resonance. Her compositions draw on structures such as the golden ratio and rule of thirds while examining geometry in architecture and the natural world. She seeks to distill subjects rather than depict them literally, capturing their emotional and visual impact through abstract landscapes, architectural fragments, suspended sheets, and walking figures.
Barragán series: Alcántara’s ongoing photographic study of Luis Barragán’s architecture examines the relationship between form, color, and spatial poetry. The series turns walls, windows, and passages of light into visual metaphors and meditative abstractions, and has been presented in international publications, galleries, and museums.
Additional work: Alcántara is the author of several publications, including the bilingual monograph *Misiones Franciscana de Fray Junípero Serra*, about the architectural and historical legacy of Spanish missions in Mexico and California. She has also worked as an actress and participated in the 2024 multidisciplinary performance *Can We Know the Sound of Forgiveness*, presented at Rice University and Carnegie Hall. Her current projects include architecture, portraiture, cultural landscapes, photography, and travel journals.
Accessibility: No accessibility information is provided on the event page.