Mexico has been through numerous changes during the past few years. The resulting political and social tension has created fresh opportunities for artists to centers devoted to political talk and aesthetic explorations, reflecting the inhabitants’ attempts to confront the uncertainties of life in Mexico with various survival strategies.  The desire to acknowledge the realities of daily life has been well represented in exhibitions such as “Coartadas/Alibis” at the Witte de With in Amsterdam, and “Mexico City: An exhibition about the Exchange Rates of Bodies and Value” at P.S.I in New York.  Position between –Latin and North America, Mexico exists as an interesting geographical hub for artists to live and work while participating in an increasingly globalized art world.
After “Focus Germany” (Flash  Art, May/June 2002), we continue our commitment to explore regional art communities through “Focus Mexico,” a special supplement which includes profiles of contemporary artists working in Mexico, as well as companion feature articles on the Mexican art scene by Berlin Kunstwerke director and P.S.IChief Curator Klaus Biesenbach, as well as a conversation between the Mexico City-based Spanish artist Santiago Sierra and Pamela Echeverría.
Our selections reflect the most interesting work being made in Mexico, and represent a wide range of both established and emerging artists. We have not included profiles on artists who are featured elsewhere in this issue (Francis Alÿs, Ivan Edeza, Teresa Margolles, Daniela Rossell and Santiago Sierra).
Avery special thanks goes out to our Mexico-Based regular contributors Pamela Echeverría and Ricardo Pohlenz, who helped select the artists included in this supplement.

LUIS FELIPE ORTEGA
Mexico City, 1966. Lives and works in México City. I did not go to art school. My artistic concerns came from my literary and philosophical formation. At the beginning of my production as a visual artist. I did not intend to transgress aesthetic boundaries, nor the limits of painting or sculpture, but rather to build  muy ideas into visual records. As I have never had a studio to make my works. I have developed further interest in looking at my everyday activities, linking them to literature, and doing personal research into my immediate condition. I live in Mexico City, and that is that  makes it the natural space for my oeuvre, I do not try to charge my work with local elements, but to hind my ideas to the spaces that I know best.
( Luis Felipe Ortega, from “Tirana Biennale I” .Giancarlo Politi Editore, Milan, 2001).