Casa Wabi Foundation and John Giorno Foundation present Dial-A-Poem Mexico, the first posthumous two-part edition of John Giorno’s iconic public poetry service. The piece is available to callers in Mexico for free since February 10, 2022.
First launched in 1968 after a conversation with William Burroughs, the ongoing project allows callers to access a selection of poetry by dialing from their phone. Dial-A-Poem was unique in that it discovered the telephone as a place of mass communication. More than a million people used the service, which inspired a variety of artistic and commercial applications such as Dial-A-Joke, Dial Sports, and Dial A Horoscope. The Mexican edition offers two toll-free numbers for local callers, one with national poetry and the second with poetry from previous editions in English:

+ 52 55 9225 2840 (Mexican Spanish and native languages edition)
+ 52 55 9225 2673 (Original English edition)

Dial-A-Poem Mexico was recorded in Mexico City and is the first edition to be produced in languages other than English. The platform brings together the work of 30 Mexican authors from different generations with 27 texts in Spanish and 3 in Mixe, Mixteco and Maya Tzotzil respectively. The selection was organized by Claudia Quezada—coordinator of the Center for Research and Literary Studies of Aguascalientes (Ciela Fraguas)—and Alberto Ríos de la Rosa, curator of Fundación Casa Wabi. The service will continue to grow each year with new works from other authors, musicians, and artists. The selected authors are:

Javier Acosta (Zacatecas ,1967)
Susi Bentzulul (Chiapas, 1995)
Adán Brand (Aguascalientes, 1984)
César Cañedo (Sinaloa, 1988)
Bertha María Choza (Sinaloa ,1994)
Elsa Cross (Ciudad de México, 1946)
Luis Vicente de Aguinaga (Jalisco, 1971)
Diana del Ángel (Ciudad de México, 1982)
Elisa Díaz Castelo (Ciudad de México, 1986)
Claudina Domingo (Ciudad de México, 1982)
Diana Domínguez (Oaxaca, 1994)
Victoria Equihua (Michoacán, 1993)
Fernando Fernández (Ciudad de México, 1964)
David Anuar (Quintana Roo, 1989)
Jeanne Karen (San Luis Potosí, 1976)
Lorena Huitrón (Veracruz, 1982)
Orlando Mondragón (Guerrero, 1993)
Alec Montero (Guanajuato, 1997)
Jorge Ortega (Baja California, 1972)
Patricia Ortiz (Aguascalientes, 1972)
María Rivera (Ciudad de México, 1971)
Martha Rodríguez Mega (Ciudad de México, 1991)
Celerina Sánchez (Oaxaca, 1967)
Claudia Santa Ana (Ciudad de México, 1974)
Renato Tinajero (Tamaulipas, 1976)
Ángela Vázquez González (Ciudad de México, 2000)
Eduardo Vázquez Martín (Ciudad de México, 1962)
Frydha Victoria (Nayarit, 1993)
Daniel Wence (Michoacán, 1984)
Ricado Yáñez (Jalisco, 1948)

Huma Bhabha’s work addresses themes of memory,war, displacement, and the pervasive histories of colonialism. Using found materials and the detritus of everyday life, she creates haunting human figures that hover between abstraction and figuration,monumentality and entropy.

Located between the sea and the mountains and inspired by the natural world that surrounds it , the site-specific 4.5 meters concrete sculpture houses a vertical garden with a variety of plant species that include orchids, bromelias, cacti, climbing fig and bay-hops, among others.

The surface of the sculpture is continuously wet with water that flows steadily and slowly from the top of the artwork downwards. As a celebration to the living universe, the monumental garden-sculpture becomes a powerful symbol that draws on the perception of time and space. Rondinone masterfully transforms natural elements into an artificial life system.

The collaboration between Sodi and Kato presents a set of totems made from clay cubes and multiple organic lines and pictorial elements that embody a primary and universal form of humanity founded less on reason than intuition. The silhouettes and features of these magical beings emphasize simple shapes and intense colors and invite viewers to recogni-ze themselves.

Made from white marble bricks – the epitome of classical sculptural production – the wall is removed from its traditional function and re-contextualized in a narrative of the absurd. A wall that does not divide anything builds a critique of irrational and incomprehen-sible actions that lead to the construction of physical or imaginary walls.
It is about breaking down the walls, physical and mental” –Bosco Sodi.

Bosco Sodi installed a symbolic Wall in the emblematic Washington Square Park, in New York. The project arose in response to “the growing indignation of the Mexican people regarding the immigration policies implemented in the United States.”
The 1,600 bricks were made in collaboration with 20 Mexican artisans who used materials from Oaxaca to later be transported by migrant route from Oaxaca to Nuevo Laredo, and from there to New York City.
People of all ages helped dismantle the wall, taking every single brick with them.
The action responded nonviolently to hostile treatment of migrants.To include instead of removing; and destroy walls.

They were presented for the first time in 2006 during the 27th edition of the Sao Paulo Biennial, the installation of lattices made of clay results from the collaboration between the artists Lucia Koch (Brazil) and Héctor Zamora (Mexico). Koch and Zamora rethink conventional exhibition spaces, generating friction between public and private, exterior and interior, organic and geometric, real and imaginary. The installation contrasts with the concrete of the main building, generating an open and walkable dynamic towards the garden.

Fundación Casa Wabi thanks the artists for the generous donation of the piece.

Loris Gréaud has selected a score of his pieces to bury along the nature trails of the gardens. The artist’s concept, simple and highly complex in its execution, embodies the epitome of the ghost: the pieces are invisible, but they are physically present. Visitors are therefore encouraged to project these pieces, imagine them and fantasize about them.

The Underground Sculpture Park has been made possible thanks to: Fundación Casa Wabi, Galerie Max Hetzler Berlin I Paris I London, Globe, Rosenblum Collection & Friends, LPART, Katoen Natie, Seeyousound, Realism Noir, Agnès Renoult Communication.

Made by Mexican artist Bosco Sodi, the land art installation is made up of monumental squared structures that emphasize the strength of the human perspective in the face of nature. The lines of the cubes dramatically frame the variations of light, the entropy of erosion, the power of the ocean and the vegetation that grows between the bricks. Each of the sixty-four two-meter cubes is made up of 1,600 handcrafted bricks. In total, 102,400 pieces were baked in a rustic oven within forty batches for nearly 1,000 hours. The total weight of this monumental installation is 716 tons.