Ashes and Snow by Gregory Colbert at the Zócalo Nomadic Museum closed in Mexico City on April 27, 2008.
The Mexico City opening marked the fifth installation of Ashes and Snow, Gregory Colbert’s sixteen-year personal and artistic odyssey. Ashes and Snow is an ongoing project that weaves together photographic works, film, art installations and a novel in letters. The exhibition consists of more than 50 large-scale photographic artworks, a 60-minute feature film and two short film haikus. To date, more than nine and a half million people around the world have visited the exhibition.
Gregory Colbert originally conceived of the idea for a sustainable traveling museum in 1999. He envisioned a structure that could easily be assembled in ports of call around the world, providing a transitory environment for his work on its global journey. The first public installation of Ashes and Snow at the Arsenale in Venice, which opened in 2002, inspired the architectural concepts used in the Nomadic Museum.
The Zócalo Nomadic Museum, designed by Colombian architect Simón Vélez, occupied 5,130-square meters, and contained two galleries and three distinct theatres. For the first time, the Nomadic Museum incorporated water as a design element to recall the unique history of the Zócalo, which was once surrounded by canals. This architectural choice honored the symbolic significance of the Zócalo as the center of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, a city founded by the Aztecs on a small island in the middle of Lake Texcoco in 1325.
The show will open next in Brazil in 2009. Sponsored by The Rolex Institute
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