Founded by Aarón Flores, Araceli Zúñiga, Blanca Noval Vilar, and César Espinosa, Colectivo 3 was a Mexico City-based collective active from 1981 to 1985. Inspired by the Sandinista-led uprising in Nicaragua that ended the 43-year Somoza dictatorship (1936–79), the group initiated an international mail art project called Poema Colectivo Revolución (1981–83). Colectivo 3 sent a simple template on a letter-sized sheet of paper to artists living in 43 countries and received hundreds of responses that comprised a collective meditation on the theme of revolution. Poema is an example of artistic solidarity of epic proportions that responds to common struggles and shared desires in a moment of global upheaval. Ideologically complex and aesthetically diverse, the project assembled artists’ alternative re-imaginings of existing social and political realities. This presentation features facsimiles of the surviving contributions alongside original contributions and ephemera. The work continues in Scaife Gallery 1 as part of Refractions.
