My Work Included in Mumedi Exhibit: To Death with a Smile
I just recently received the news that my poster, Hippie Eden, was included in this year’s Mumedi Exhibit, To Death With a Smile.
If you have never heard of Mumedi, it’s Mexico’s Museum of Design located in the Historic District of Mexico City. I have long been a fan of their exhibits, and have been trying to get into their show: To Death With a Smile for a few years. I like the message of this show: appreciate your days on this earth, and celebrate both the life and death of those persons who have most profoundly shaped you. I like the idea that in other cultures, death is treated less like a door slamming, more like a permeable barrier, possibly even a vitrine into another existence.
This year the exhibit received more than 5,000 entries, and my poster was one of 300 finalists from 29 countries.
I entered three posters this year, ones I made about the life and passing of my father, Robert McKnight. The year after his death, I took a little time to try and record his legacy, to try and make sure my sisters and I could continue to remember the complexity of him, his quirkiness, his collections, his outrageous laugh and scandalous humor.
Hippy Heaven, one of the last posters I made, is a surreal walk back into the extravagant garden my parents made in our relatively small city yard, surrounded on all sides with chain link and brick. It was their Nirvana, complete with two little fish ponds, tulips and daffodils in the spring, banana plants in large planters we hauled out each summer, a waterfall, and handmade wooden plant holders (carved with flowers by my mother) attached to our chain link fence. These held dozens of boston ferns and christmas cacti.
I think a bit of my spirit still wanders that garden in my mind, perhaps my father dwells there too, enjoying perpetual spring.
So if you happen to be in Mexico City before March 29th, check out the exhibit!
Museo Mexicano del Diseño
Francisco I Madero 74
Col. Centro Histórico. Ciudad de México
Tel +52 (55) 55108609
