A red banner blazoned with the words “PIA CAMIL FOR SALE” cascades from the open window of an aging modernist high-rise in central Mexico City. Spanning more than six stories and billowing luxuriously in wind-chased altitudes, the streamer is clearly selling something. But it’s not real estate that’s on the market; it’s the artist and her work. Floors above in the same building, Camil and Brett Schultz present a collaborative open studio musical performance. Swathed jauntily in red at the other end of ninety feet of fabric banner, Camil croons shoegaze-y into a microphone, drumsticks handy and Roland keyboard at her side. Bleeding between urban frame and intimate participatory experience, implicating the entwinement of market and artistic practice, confusing the figure with the landscape in which it stands, Pia Camil for Sale (2010) exemplifies the artist’s capitalist critique delivered through collaborative and performative methodologies—ideas that repeat across the works and essays in the artist’s first monograph Friendly Fires.
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