Biquini Wax EPS, interviewed by Tropical Tap Water 

For the 30th edition of de Appel’s Curatorial Programme we have welcomed four collectives who are learning and practising lumbung as a model and method for collective organisation. The programme is geared towards taking the lumbung practices of documenta fifteen as a case study. Lumbung during documenta fifteen developed into both a rhizomatic collective of collectives, and the practice of decentralised collective redistribution, transforming the art institution and its exhibitionary logic. This edition of the programme is dedicated to collectives whose art and curatorial practice is distinguished by its role as a conduit for the communities with which it engages. The programme is in collaboration with Sandberg Institute’s Temporary Master Programme and Gudskul’s Collective Study and extends into 2025/2026 as a fellowship.

Tropical Tap Water interviewed the participating collectives. Here you can find their conversation with Biquini Wax. Biquini Wax (BW), a multipolar arts collective and permeable cultural center in Mexico City. Since its inception in 2011 it has been committed to be an interdependent art-space collectively managed by and for the cultural community interested in the intersection of contemporary arts and critical thought. It is both a communal living/working/hang out space as well as a self-organized study center/experimental exhibition-making (para)site.

The participating members present in Amsterdam are: Denisse Vega de Santiago, Gerardo Contreras, Mili Herrera.

Daniel (D, Tropical Tap Water): Hello, I'm Daniel from Tropical Tap Water, how are you? We are about to do this interview for the de Appel Curatorial Programme. It is meant to be a chill conversation, a way of introducing each collective participating in the Curatorial Programme Lumbung Practice of de Appel, and yourselves as individuals too. Could you briefly introduce yourselves?

Mili Herrera (MH, Biquini Wax EPS): My name is Mili Herrera, I'm a visual artist, performer, drawer, painter, whatever you want to pay me for. My personal practice is mostly referencing comic books or manga. I also like to do workshops with different collectives, mostly in Oaxaca (Mexico) but also at Biquini in Mexico City. In Oaxaca I do workshops in different villages about supernatural local legends and oral knowledge, using the comic book to build bridges between different languages and cultures of Oaxaca. After being friends with Biquini Wax for several years, doing collaborations and all kinds of stuff, I joined the collective one year ago.

Gerardo Contreras (GC, Biquini Wax EPS): I’m Gera or Gerardo, a visual artist and a kind of independent researcher of technology, of Mesoamerican ancient cultures and anthropology. I started collaborating with Biquini Wax seven years ago.

D-TTW: Can you tell us a little bit about Biquini, and introduce your work?

GC-BWEPS: Biquini started in 2011 in León, Guanajuato, Mexico. Since 2012 the collective has been based in Mexico City. In the beginning, Biquini started as an artist-run space for exhibitions for young artists, but with time it became a strange cultural center revolving around topics on Latin American Art History, Marxisms and Collectivity. One important part of the project is the idea of merging art and life practices. We exhibit a lot in the domestic space, this is a very important characteristic in our houses (we have moved to three different houses so far in Mexico City). Members of the collective, who all have different backgrounds (arts, philosophy, history, activism, et cetera), all live in the same house, where we organise exhibitions and have long discussions.

MH-BWEPS: Throughout the years it has been a very important part of the project to organically make study groups with themes or agendas that are relevant at the moment. Topics that do not matter only to the arts, but also to philosophy, science, sociology, politics or economics, et cetera. Usually, these study groups become a curatorial practice to generate exhibitions by doing artistic productions with those eclectic groups. I was part of a couple of them. I think it's a very good way to generate knowledge outside of the academic environment, to produce our own tailor-made epistemologies to understand a specific problem.

D-TTW: About your participation in the Lumbung Practice Programme at de Appel, what are you doing there? What is your plan?

GC-BWEPS: It's complex and interesting, I think. We are trying to understand more about this idea of Lumbung Practice, at the same time as we are meeting other collectives who share similar ideas of work and making art projects, in countries under precarious conditions. It’s been a real formative process. For us, one of the most important things we want to explore during our time at de Appel is collective wellbeing. For example, the idea of co-living is important in Biquini. What are the most important conflicts or problems in the house or in this co-living process? We want to understand more deeply what our values are and our resources to make projects in the contexts we face, like precarious economic conditions, the lack of funding, et cetera.

DTTW: In what phase or moment is your collective, and how does it resonate with Lumbung Practice and de Appel’s Curatorial Programme?

MH-BWEPS: I think the main reason for us to come here was to survive. At the moment we are directly affected by the conditions of gentrification in Mexico City and the high prices of the speculative housing market. We might have to move out of our house and find other ways to continue working. I now see a global context and a common thread of more precarity: we are being pressured by our governments. The idea of precarity is always connected with the idea of dignity. How can we continue our collective project with dignity, you know, with trust between ourselves? How can we build that trust? And what's the life of the projects? So, we are in a phase of exploration and openness and that is very related to the Lumbung Practice programme. We believe this programme is a way to open new doors. We can learn new techniques and knowledge from the other collectives that maybe we share a lot of conditions with. We are keeping of all those techniques we are learning through harvesting methods. That's the future for Biquini — an uncertain future. But we choose to sit with hope and also to continue this work that is outside of money beliefs, but inside friendship and a deep core belief in what we are doing.

GC-BWEPS: I think, at Biquini, we are constantly rethinking and trying to understand our practices better. We make exhibitions, we engage in hospitality practice and produce a lot of art theory in collectivity. In Mexico, contemporary art is a way of thinking, it is like an illustration of ideas and/or a process. So we want to ask ourselves: what is Biquini Wax at the moment? How can we understand our practices of co-living, hosting or assembling, our ‘cleaning roles’ as a critical practice? I think those things were invisible in other moments of our collective, but actually now they are a core aspect to our idea of trying to not contribute to more capitalism.

D-TTW: How has it been, for you and as a collective, going from one country to another?

MH-BWEPS: For us, it is clear that the work in Mexico is the core of what we are doing here, so that implies asking how our presence here can nourish our collective. It's been complicated, it's like a long-distance relationship. But I think we are learning a lot of stuff and I think the experience of what we are learning will be used to build a new Biquini: doing stuff, living together, smoking together, and doing theory. But if that changes, it's also good. Because anyways, our ages and backgrounds are already changing a lot since the creation of the project and we are entering adulthood. We are not young people or teenagers anymore and this affects, of course, the domestic-art-relationship. A lot of needs are changing and that's part of the dignity of growing old. There are, of course, conflicts and controversies of coming to Europe and what that means, but I think the programme has been a very good one because it's a non-Western focused programme. It feels more like surfing the platform that Europe is by bringing a lot of non-Western people here. We are investing our savings by coming here. It's like a jump of fate to the emptiness, I hope it will result in a good thing.

D-TTW: What is your understanding of the Lumbung Practice? Have you practiced something similar to the Lumbung before within your collective?

MH-BWEPS: Well, I come from Oaxaca. I lived in Mixtec and Zapotec towns. They have practices similar to Lumbung Practice under other names like ‘Tequio’ or ‘Mayordomia’. So for me, it's like an assurance that those processes are the way forward, and you find some hope in those similarities. And you see how old those traditions are and how they can sustain entire cultures and civilizations based on this kind of knowledge. These practices of the commons include a morality or a very human basic value; to be alive, and how in the context of capitalism, the logic behind it is against life itself. Capitalists work with this logic of murder. Here at the Curatorial Programme we are learning a lot from the other collectives and seeing that we have a lot of struggles in common. That, for me, is Lumbung. This distribution of surplus, these kinds of ideas make you believe that you are not alone. I like to think of the Lumbung as a web, an analog internet of affections. How can this be imagined? How can we create collectivities that can survive capitalist contexts?

GB-WEPS: Lumbung Practice is a tool to navigate the contemporary institutional art system. As collectives, we can sometimes act like a Trojan Horse, distributing or redistributing resources. It is important to learn about Lumbung, and at the same time to use these tools within our ecosystem to better understand ourselves collectively and to strengthen each other.

D-TTW: Why do you think it's important to work collectively?

MH-BWEPS: I would say collectivity is the only way that we have. Collectivity is always in relation to individuality. It's just about being awake, being present in the moment, being conscious. We should constantly ask ourselves: how are we living? And notice how we are a collective already, in society. Look at class, ethnicity, gender…. So the question is how can we practice collectivity better? Especially against a system that pushes us towards ignorance or lack of empathy, we are all suffering from those individual ways, but that doesn’t need to be the case.

GC-BWEPS: I think it is also a political issue. We can work individually, but when authorship dissolves — particularly in artworks, curatorial projects, or educational initiatives — it builds a kind of temporary autonomy. Sharing knowledge and tools through collective production highlights an interest of our collective: economic and epistemic self-defense. We need to create more solidarities within our collectives while also seeking resources for our practices and our lives, without losing the imagination and irreverence of our shared sense of humor.

Tropical Tap Waters are professional jammers, open for hire for birthday parties, weddings, exhibitions, mournings, festivals and what not. Our dream is to play in a conference. The members are Daniel Aguilar Ruvalcaba, Diana Cantarey, Julian Abraham “Togar,” and Simnikiwe Buhlungu.