Series 06 – Luis Young

Documentation Museo Tamayo

The Hidden Face

Three aspects of the Museo Tamayo—previously unknown to me—are revealed in the series presented by Luis Young: the white, geometric rooftop; the niches nestled just beneath it; and an aerial view—both familiar and foreign—that fragments the central courtyard. As these elements unfold, the building is depicted from whole to detail, bringing into focus the hidden spaces and perspectives tucked within its folds—those inaccessible without the aid of a drone or a ladder.

Luis’s work exists at the intersection of photography and design, constantly shifting between the roles of observer and maker, and at times merging the two. His practice often reveals latent tensions—conditions that might later be analyzed, questioned, or acted upon. I am reminded of his design interventions that bring attention to the often overlooked: scaffolding, the activation of buildings still under construction, or the precarious lattice platforms supporting gardens in the steep ravines of western Mexico City—an urban condition we’ve come to normalize. To this list, we might now add the rooftop of the Tamayo Museum, with all its implications in terms of use, meaning, and appearance.

It was one of Luis’s photographs that, for the first time, made the museum’s pyramidal form unmistakably clear to me—a massive stone geometry rising from the forest canopy, visible only from above, like the Nazca lines, perceptible only from the sky. What lies ahead for the Tamayo Museum—from its most iconic elements to those that lie outside the bounds of collective imagination? What might Teodoro González de León and Abraham Zabludovsky have envisioned for the summit of their building?

In this portrait of absence—of the museum devoid of exhibitions—I see Luis’s images as an invitation to imagine what remains unseen, or perhaps, not yet seen.

Pablo Goldin Marcovich.