It is not so often that an artwork’s intent and voice are completely clear. In his latest video installation piece, Canon, for the Museo El Eco in Mexico City, Miguel Monroy filmed a multi-layered video with a complex cast of characters in constant choreography. Filmed in the gallery space of the Museo El Eco, the video is an enactment of the actions that occur within the museum institution. Made with such clarity that the artist’s intent is obvious, the video successfully illustrates what takes place within museum institutions.

Miguel Monroy, still from Canon, 2011; video and installation; image courtesy the artist and the Museo Experimental El Eco. Photo: Ramiro Chavez.

Filmed and exhibited in the same gallery, Canon is a video loop that shows the same cast of characters entering, exiting and generally enacting the various roles most common in the museum.  Character #1 enters the exhibition space carrying a ten-foot ladder, plops it down directly in the center of the space, and leans on it, as if waiting on some sort of direction. Character #2 walks in from the opposite side of the gallery, crosses the room in front of character #1 and stops to admire an imaginary work of art hanging on the wall in front of her. Neither actor acknowledges the other and they act autonomously of one another. Sometime in the middle of Character #1’s and #2’s actions, a third character enters and walks directly up to the far back wall and proceeds to spray paint a large black spot, essentially defacing the gallery wall and the imaginary work of art that may have hung there. At some point character #1 leaves the scene, and character #2 comes and goes several times, both fulfilling the same roles over and over again in a dizzying and cyclical dramedy. Character #4 enters somewhere in the mix, carrying a large flatscreen TV exactly like the one the final video is exhibited on; and, as if cued by the smell of spray paint, character #5 walks in carrying a roller covered with white paint and proceeds to paint over character #3’s large black spot of spray paint.

At least I think this is the order. 

Miguel Monroy, installation view of Canon, 2011; video and installation; image courtesy the artist and the Museo Experimental El Eco. Photo: Ramiro Chavez.

The actions of the five characters in Canon are autonomous from one another, with the exception of the spray paint kid and the museum preparator enlisted to repair the damage. The rest of the roles are enacted continuously and exhaustively. They never once really interact. Instead they all act as parts of the exact same museum machine. They enter and exit at different coordinated times in the middle of another character’s action, overlapping upon one another, so much that it becomes hard to distinguish the beginning and end of the choreography of the characters as the video endlessly repeats. 

Monroy highlights the constant characters, and at times caricatures, that we all play in the revolving door of the museum profession. It is a stripped down and simple yet captivating play of the museum as an institution that operates in its own cyclical world day in and day out.