The National Bank of Mexico, through its Heritage and Cultural Development department, Banamex, presents the exhibition Graciela Iturbide: Fixing Time. This exhibition celebrates her having been awarded the Princess of Asturias Award in the Arts category in 2025. Through a photographic selection curated by the artist herself, we discover her metaphorical and intuitive vision, which blends documentary approach with poetic sensibility.
The exhibition begins with a photograph of her wedding, the only color print in the show, which was altered by Francisco Toledo. The central theme is Graciela's image: two self-portraits greet us like a double door, reflecting her own image and that of the fauna that represents her.
Her gaze does not stop at the obvious; it transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary. Simplicity becomes profound, revealing Graciela with snakes in her mouth, Graciela veiling her gaze with two birds, one alive and one dead, framing essential dualities: Eros and Thanatos, yin and yang, Coatlicue and Tezcatlipoca. A fish rests in her fish-mouth, but it is not dead: it radiates light, a luminescence. This glow must be understood as the entire alphabet she is whispering instead of scales. What are these creatures, her tona, her ch’ulel? They are none other than the nahuales of her camera.
The sacred does not reside solely in the human. It also inhabits the zoomorphic and the phytomorphic: goats suspended in the air, cacti in the botanical garden, trees like columns of forgotten temples, birds as messengers. All of this is “what is seen and what is unseen,” as she herself defines her practice.
Each photograph pulsates with the intimate concerns of one of the most important artists of our time. From her early commissions for the National Indigenous Institute—which gave rise to the iconic images of Angel Woman and her Self-Portrait with her face painted as a Seri woman—to her series in Juchitán, where she developed a visual language that captures the everyday life of a wedding, a bath, or a political march.
Graciela Iturbide's work is a play of appearances where nothing is what it seems. It is the decisive moment transformed into a ritual. It is black and white photography that is not afraid of shadows. It is an intimate and honest exploration that disarms and moves us.
