Mexico City’s Zona Maco fair finds a ‘balance between continuity and renewal’ – The Art Newspaper

Returning to Mexico City’s Centro Banamex for its 22nd edition, Zona Maco (4-8 February) is the centrepiece of Mexico City Art Week 2026, with Material Art Fair at Estudios Maravilla, Unique Design X at Expo Reforma and Salón Acme at Proyectos Públicos (all 5-8 February) playing essential roles. Over the past decade, Mexico City has established itself as the centre of the Latin American art scene. Alongside the fairs, the city’s galleries and museums time their most ambitious exhibitions to Art Week, marking the start of a new programming season when local, regional and international art enthusiasts gather in its vibrant cultural scene.

Founded in 2002 by Zélika García, Zona Maco is now the largest art and design fair in Latin America. Featuring more than 220 galleries from 26 countries this year, its programming includes contemporary and modern art, design, antiques, photography and publications, all curated under the artistic direction of Direlia Lazo.

“The 2026 edition reflects a careful balance between continuity and renewal,” Lazo tells The Art Newspaper. “A strong core of long-standing exhibitors—many of whom have been central to the fair’s development over the years—returns once again. At the same time, the 2026 edition introduces over 40 new galleries. These newly incorporated exhibitors span Latin America, North America, Europe and Asia, and include internationally established galleries and younger spaces with clearly defined curatorial positions.”

At Zona Maco, the storied Mexico City gallery OMR, which has participated in the fair since its inception, is exhibiting, among other works, a new painting and sculpture by art star Jose Dávila; Julian Charrière’s vending machine offering fossilised ammonites to comment on the absurdity of treating nature as a commodity; Alicja Kwade’s aluminium, stone and mirror BIG BE-HIDE installation anchoring the stand and a new narrative work on paper by Marcel Dzama related to his concurrent solo show at the gallery. The gallery is offering extra programming at Bodega, a venue carved out of its art warehouse, where Dorian Ulises López Macías is showing street photography from his 20-year Mexicano archive, and at LagoAlgo, where Rafa Esparza has created a communal installation using adobe.

Kurimanzutto, another of Mexico City’s powerhouse galleries, is showcasing works by several of its Mexican artists, including a colourful floral composition by the emerging artist Ana Segovia; Abraham Cruzvillegas’s seven-part blue monochrome wall work; a seascape painting dripping volcanic tar by Minerva Cuevas and Dr Lakra’s ink drawing of a dragon mounted on an ornate wooden screen. The gallery’s stand will also feature works by international artists including Haegue Yang, Nairy Baghramian, Anri Sala and Petrit Halilaj. Oscar Murillo is showing new paintings in his first solo exhibition at the gallery’s headquarters in San Miguel Chapultepec (4 February-28 March).

Perhaps no CDMX gallery has a busier schedule than Saenger Galería. It is showing a selection of Mexico City-based artists at Zona Maco, including Robert Janitz, alongside international painters like Shinya Azuma, in the main gallery sector; its stand in the fair’s photo sector will showcase the Slovak photographer Mária Švarbová. Saenger is also participating in Material Art Fair and Salón Acme, where the gallery is presenting a group booth of emerging Mexican and Japanese artists and a solo show of works by the Ecuadorian artist Juan Carlos León, respectively. At Saenger’s space in Tacubaya, it is showcasing Portrait Collective, a group exhibition that mixes Mexican Modernists, including Diego Rivera, with contemporary artists such as Gilberto Aceves Navarro.

Travesía Cuatro opened its first gallery in Madrid in 2003, then expanded to Casa Franco, a 1929 Luis Barragán house in Guadalajara, in 2013, and to Mexico City in 2019. Its stand at Zona Maco features works by Ángela de la Cruz, Donna Huanca, La Chola Poblete, Jorge Méndez Blake, Manuela Solano, Teresa Solar Abboud and others. The gallery is also hosting solo exhibitions by the late Brazilian painter Miriam Inez da Silva in Guadalajara and the Mexican sculptor Tania Pérez Córdova in Mexico City, dedicating its entire space to her first solo show in the city in ten years, following recent surveys—using objects to point to broader ideas about time, existence and cultural meaning—at New York’s SculptureCenter and CDMX’s Museo Tamayo.

Collaboration with the UK

A new local space, Georgina Pounds Gallery, is collaborating with Margate’s Carl Freedman Gallery on a shared stand at Zona Maco, showcasing artists from both programmes, including works by the coveted British painter Vanessa Raw. Founded by the gallerist Georgina Pounds, a former director at OMR and Galeria Hilario Galguera, the gallery opens at Casa Lamm, an architectural marvel in Roma Norte, with a solo show of Raw’s striking canvases exploring female intimacy, identity and the natural world (4 February-22 March).

Standouts among the foreign galleries showing at Zona Maco include Pace, which is presenting a solo booth of new, large-scale paintings by Kylie Manning, who grew up between Alaska and Mexico, surfing and camping along Mexico’s Pacific coastline. Fresh off a sold-out solo show at Pace’s New York gallery, the Brooklyn-based artist uses natural pigments and Old Master techniques to craft dreamlike landscapes. Another returning US gallery is Sean Kelly, participating in the fair for the eighth year, whose stand includes the Guadalajara-based sculptor Jose Dávila and the Mexico City-based artist Hilda Palafox, who uses painting and graphic design techniques to focus on the female form.

Another returning international exhibitor is Paris-based 193 Gallery, known for its focus on the Global South. The gallery has participated in Zona Maco for the past five years. The key to the gallery’s success, says co-founder César Levy, is bringing its artists to Mexico City to create work during residencies. At the fair, the gallery is showing works by the Ivorian artist Joana Choumali and the New Zealand painter Rob Tucker that they made in local studios. They found inspiration in Mexico City’s vibrant atmosphere, which has made it one of the best cities for creating, viewing and collecting art.

• Zona Maco, Centro Banamex, Mexico City, 4-8 February