Mouth

May 14 – June 8, 2025

Santiago Sierra, Video, 126 Photographs of teeth of migrants in Tijuana, Mexico. February 2019/Cumbia rebajada lowered tempo and inverted Madrid, Spain. November 2022

Mónica Palma, Santiago Sierra, Michael Wetzel

Curated by Leonora Loeb + Janice Sloane

Opening reception: Wednesday, May 14th, 2025, 6-8 pm
Performance of “Vaho/Fog”, by Mónica Palma: May 14th, 4:45 pm – 5:30 pm

Press Release

Underdonk is proud to present an exhibition featuring the mixed media performance and drawing of Mónica Palma, a video by Santiago Sierra, and the paintings of Michael Wetzel.

This exhibition explores themes of consumption, displacement, and the visible and invisible marks we leave on the world and each other.

Palma’s work delves into the physicality of experience and the body's ability to leave a lasting impression. Using the mouth as a tool for the making of her work, she incorporates materials like burnt tortillas and activated charcoal, engaging in a "childlike oral fixation" to imprint her presence onto the paper. Palma explains, "Both performance and drawings alike look damaged, caressed, licked, hugged, and bitten, which is a way to make a body visible and occupy space." Her work explores vulnerability, intimacy, and in her words, “reclaimed identity”.

Sierra’s work reinterprets certain strategies that characterize the minimalist, conceptual, and performance art of the sixties and seventies. His work strives to expose the perverse networks of power that lead to the alienation and exploitation of workers, perpetuate injustice, racism, and violence, and the inequalities of wealth produced by capitalism.

Sierra’s multimedia video included in Mouth shows the teeth of migrants from South America, Central America, and the Caribbean who have attempted to cross the U.S. border. By focusing solely on the condition of the teeth, the viewer can imagine the life stories of the individuals depicted, highlighting the humanitarian crisis at the border.

Wetzel's paintings often use food as a printing medium, selecting items as disparate as sushi rolls and donuts, or, in the case of “They Are Friends”, hamburger fixings. These marks combined become frenetic and playful depictions of wandering figures and corporate imagery, a response to the systems that underpin our consumerist modern world. Focusing on the hidden costs of readily available goods, Wetzel states, "I am gobsmacked by the repulsive and beautiful seen and unseen sacrifices that made the bounty of my deli happen for me. What is implied is that we are in a constant, insatiable cycle of consuming, while the food industry has compromised the entire landscape around us. We’ve eaten the world is what’s at stake here.”

Mónica Palma

Palma was born in Mexico City and studied visual art at the Universidad Veracruzana in Xalapa, Veracruz. She received her MFA in Painting and Printmaking at Virginia Commonwealth University. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Her work has been shown at TSA (NYC), 245 Varet Street (NYC), Ortega y Gasset Projects (NYC), the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City), Soloway Gallery (NYC), Underdonk Gallery (NYC), and Essex Flowers (NYC), My Pet Ram (NYC), and Tang Teaching Museum (NY). Mónica was the 2022 AIR spring resident at UTK in Tennessee.

Santiago Sierra

Born in 1966, Sierra lives and works in Madrid, Spain. He graduated in Fine Arts from the Complutense University of Madrid and he completed his artistic training in Hamburg. His beginnings are linked to alternative artistic circuits in the capital of Spain -El Ojo Atómico Espacio P-, although he would develop a large part of his career in Mexico (1995-2006) and Italy (2006-10). Sierra has exhibited in museums, art centers and galleries around the world, such as the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art ARS 01 (Helsinki), the Kunst Werke (Berlin), the Kunsthaus Bregenz (Austria), the MoMA PS1 (New York), the Artium (Vitoria) and the PAC Padiglione d’Arte Contemporánea (Milan). His work is represented by galleries such as Helga de Alvear (Madrid, Spain), Prometeo gallery (Milan, Italy), Labor (Mexico) and KOW (Berlin, Germany). In 2025, two significant solo exhibitions will take place: Santiago Sierra: Barro at The Maëlstrom Archivo and Bandera Negra at the Helga de Alvear Museum of Contemporary Art; and 6543 minutes at the Museum of Contemporary Art, University of Chile (MAC Parque Forestal).

Michael Wetzel

Michael Wetzel was born in Mt. Kisco, N.Y. He received his M.F.A. from SUNY Purchase. He currently lives in New York City and works in Brooklyn. Wetzel has shown paintings, drawings, and sculptures throughout the United States, as well as in Europe and South America. His work has been included in Scream, curated by Fernanda Arruda and Michael Clifton at both Anton Kern Gallery and the Moore Space, Miami, Noctumbule at the Bibliotheque Thiers Paris, France, curated by Chris D’Amelio and Lucien Terras, She’s Come Undone, Artemis Greenberg Van Doren, New York, NY, curated by Augusto Arbizo, and 100 Sculptures, curated by Todd Von Ammons and Joseph Henrikson. He has had both solo and group shows at John Connelly Presents, 11 Rivington, Anthony Meier Fine Art, Caso Triangulo, Galerie Christina Wilson, Honey Ramka, Kristen Lorello Gallery, and RA Gallery, amongst others. He was the 2006 recipient of the Deutsche Bank Fellowship, awarded jointly by Deutsche Bank Art, Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation, and NYFA to 6 Fellows. He is currently included in R U Still Painting? Curated by Falcon Art at RASPA, NY.

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