Lux Perpetua Puts Mérida on the Art World's Map

As Lux Perpetua Art Centre celebrates its first decade of promoting contemporary Mexican art in Mérida, the cultural center is setting its sights on a bigger stage.

“The purpose of the gallery is to grow internationally and become well-known nationally,” says Mimi Cervera, general director of the Lux Perpetua Art Centre Project and founder of MCV Contemporary Art and Art Consultancy. “For Lux Perpetua, now is just the right time to go national and international.”

The path to that goal runs through art fairs, an essential investment for galleries looking to reach collectors and curators beyond their home cities. That includes involvement in major, international art fairs, crucial networking opportunities for galleries aiming to elevate their profiles.

“To participate in an art fair is very expensive,” Cervera acknowledges. “Sometimes you just go because that’s the only way to be in the spot of international collectors or international curators.”

Founded by art collector Arturo Canto and a group of fellow collectors, Lux Perpetua has grown from its original gallery space to encompass three locations in Mérida’s Itzimná neighborhood. The complex now includes Casa lo’ol Graphic Workshop and Casa El Framboyán Residencias Artísticas, a residence hosting writers, producers, filmmakers, painters, ceramicists, sculptors, photographers and performance artists from around the world.

The gallery’s current exhibition, Intersections: Poetry and Geography, features 14 women artists, showcasing diverse perspectives. Among them is Lorena Ancona, who works with clay from Yucatán and Quintana Roo, creating landscape pieces that reveal mountains and trees when viewed from a distance. English artist Orlanda Broom sent four pieces from London, while Franca Álvarez from Mexico City created a 52-piece installation that references the temple serpent from Chichén Itzá and the fertile red soil native to Yucatán.

“When you do a woman’s exhibition, people think you want to do something to protest,” Cervera says. “This has nothing to do with that. It’s how this subtle or tender, or how a woman see the world differently than a man.”

The exhibition also features work by Erika Harrsch, whose anthropomorphic installation depicts climate-driven forest migration through a cedar trunk with human feet in place of roots, visualizing trees as walking figures adapting to environmental change. A piece from this “Trees on the March” series is currently displayed at the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, New York.

Mérida’s contemporary art scene has expanded significantly in recent years, with galleries like Lux Perpetua joining established spaces and newer ventures in creating a vibrant cultural ecosystem. The city’s growing reputation has attracted artists and collectors from Mexico and abroad.

For Cervera, the key to Lux Perpetua’s longevity in a market where many galleries come and go lies in balancing commercial needs with cultural mission. “When you really find the mission, the important mission of a gallery in a city, that’s the path,” she says. “Sometimes in a show you can have a sell-out. Sometimes in a show, you will sell one piece. But you have to keep going.”

The gallery’s team, composed largely of artists and art students, brings the passion and sensitivity required for the work. “It’s not just the commercial, the money mission,” Cervera explains. You have to follow a path of really putting your hopes on how important your cultural mission is in society.”

As Lux Perpetua enters its second decade, the gallery aims to join the ranks of high-level spaces in Mexico City that have established themselves on the international art circuit. Success in that market could cement Mérida’s position as more than just a regional art destination — a goal that aligns with the gallery’s founding vision of using art and culture to put the city on the map.

“I think a city with culture and art is a reference point,” Cervera says. “And it brings people from other places, because a lot of people want to see this kind of art.”

If You Go

Lux Perpetua Art Centre: Calle 20 #87E x 13 y 15, Colonia Itzimná, Mérida
Current exhibition: Intersections: Poetry and Geography, featuring 14 female artists,
Artist residency: Applications accepted from writers, producers, filmmakers, painters, ceramicists, sculptors, photographers and performance artists
More info: Lux Perpetua Art Centre

Lee Steele

Lee Steele is the founding director of Mérida-based Roof Cat Media S de RL de CV and has published Yucatán Magazine and other titles since 2012. He was Hearst Connecticut’s Sunday Magazine creative director and worked in New York City for various magazine publishers, including Condé Nast and Primedia, for over 20 years.