Know Before You Go
The Centro de Cultura Digital is open Tuesday through Sundays from 11 am to 7 pm.
Mexico City, Mexico
Centro de Cultura Digital
Beneath the most controversial monument in Mexico City is a cultural center that exhibits only digital art.
In 2010, the “Estela de Luz” was inaugurated as the commemorative monument of the bicentennial of Mexican independence. But when a newspaper report revealed the exorbitant total cost of the project was far too high to for a tower covered in marble and lights, the monument became instead a symbol of Mexican corruption.
After the scandalous cost was revealed, an attempt was made to redefine the work by adding a Digital Culture Center, which currently operates in the basement. The center has seven spaces dedicated to different aspects of digital art: literature, games, communication, immersion, web lab, education, and free technologies.
The mission is to exhibit only digital art, for it has exhibition and immersion spaces. The most immersive is the huge white gallery in the basement that is completely illuminated by colored lights.
Despite the fact that the exhibitions are interesting, the stigma of the place did not prevent several civil organizations from converting the exterior plaza into a sidewalk reminiscent of the political disappeared of that presidential administration (2006 - 2012). On the sidewalk, small metal plates show the names and histories of each of the disappeared.
This site is undoubtedly a complex cultural space and although art critics consider it a horrific monument (baptized as the “standing cookie”), today it is part of the city’s financial district, signaling the entrance to Bosque de Chapultepec.
Contributed by
Mario Yair TS
notoriousFIG
