Visual artist whose work takes on the relation between historic and political memory-construction processes and the discursive and iconographic distortion of leftist thinking in Mexico. He is graduate of “La Esmeralda,” Mexico’s national painting, sculpture and engraving school. At numerous Mexico institutions he has presented work in solo and collective exhibitions such as El preludio de la ruptura, at the Centro Cultural Border; El ejercicio de las buenas voluntades, at Smith College’s Nixon Gallery in Southampton, Massachusetts; both Parasitage. Ruidos negros and Pintura reactiva at the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, TROMBA at the Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo; Anverso at the Museo Universitario de Ciencias y Arte-MUCA Roma; La importancia de ser autosuficiente at Proyectos Monclovia; and México bárbaro at the Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros, both in Mexico City. Shows outside Mexico included No sé qué es una casa at La Fugitiva in Havana and TEMPUS FUGAÇ/TEMPS APRECARI at VABD in Barcelona as well as at Juannio in Guatemala. He participated at the XVI Biennalle de Lyon in 2022 and 2023 as well as at the XIV Bienal de la Habana, from 2021 to 2022. Jiménez has received grants from numerous public and private institutions including the Programa BBVA Bancomer-MACG, three Jóvenes Creadores awards in 2011, 2015 and 2020, a Programa de Estímulo a la Creación y Desarrollo Artístico 2018 recognition and the 2016 Beca Adidas-Border grant. He is a Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte de México member. 

La muerte arquera y la alegría de vivir, 2024
Oil on wooden door, steel base with electrostatic paint

Totentanz, 2024
Plywood, automotive lacquer, varnish, steel, electrostatic paint, and leather
In collaboration with Edgardo Jiménez (Workshop-studio)

Totentanz, or danse macabre, is a late-medieval allegory from Western Europe that embodies the inevitability of death and in which death dances with people in an image. As seen in La muerte arquera, a 17th-century painting located in the pinacoteca (picture gallery) of the Templo de la Compañía in Guanajuato, New Spain replicated this representation from the Middle Ages. 

In this case, death is standing on tepetate, a kind of compacted red earth from the Guanajuato shoals. The bow death carries is not only a nod to the certainty of death but also to the speed with which it comes. In La muerte arquera y la alegría de vivir, Néstor Jiménez alludes to the piece from the Templo de la Compañía but replaces the scenes with those of everyday life, performed by primordial incarnated beings. The painting is also in conversation with Totentanz, an installation with figures that viewers can move around—a work that literally “dances” with the audience. Both pieces address an unnerving topic and portray a dance that no one can escape. 

*Beneficiary of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Art (National Art Creators System) 2023-26, part of the Sistema de Apoyos a la Creación y Proyectos Culturales (Support System for Creative and Cultural Projects).