Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.I remember arriving in Mexico City very vividly. It was a Sunday \u2013 11 November 1984 \u2013 and my dad, who was a very loving, strict man, took us to school\u00a0the next day. That was my first connection to the country. I loved it.I was born in Colombia to a Colombian mother and an Italian father, and we travelled around a bit \u2013 living in Paris and Buenos Aires \u2013 before settling here. I consider myself Mexican; I\u2019m married to a Mexican and I have Mexican kids. But it took me a while to understand what\u00a0Mexico was to me. My school, the French Lyc\u00e9e, didn\u2019t teach Mexican history or geography. I made up for\u00a0that when I became an adult; then it was very much\u00a0about understanding the country, its complexities, the landscapes and social aspects.When I met Jos\u00e9, my partner, I started hanging out with his friends, many of whom were artists. It was like a new world had opened up. Gabriel Orozco, who was already quite a well-known artist then, said, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you open a gallery and represent me and all our friends?\u201d\u00a0The landscape for contemporary art in Mexico City was pretty deserted then. Most of the energy revolved around artist-run spaces, not so much museums or galleries. \u201cLet\u2019s risk it all,\u201d we said.\u00a0Downtown is a place where jewels can appearThe first show happened in Mercado de Medell\u00edn. We rented the fruter\u00eda for a day, and all of the works responded\u00a0to the materials of the market \u2013 and were sold at the market\u2019s prices. It appeared on the front cover of the\u00a0main newspaper in Mexico. We started taking over different spaces around the city for a few years, then a warehouse, before finally settling in what is now Kurimanzutto \u2013 Jos\u00e9\u00a0Kuri and M\u00f3nica Manzutto \u2013 in the\u00a0city\u2019s San Miguel Chapultepec neighbourhood, where we now live.The southern neighbourhoods are historically the most intellectual, where Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Rufino Tamayo had their homes. In San Miguel Chapultepec there is an incredible hacienda where Manuel Mondrag\u00f3n, who played an important part in the Mexican revolution, lived. His daughter was Nahui Olin, a painter and a muse to Dr Atl and many others. Roma and Condesa, where we lived for 20 years, developed a lot later, starting with some cool restaurants and caf\u00e9s.\u00a0Contramar \u2013 a restaurant in Roma \u2013 is on everybody\u2019s lists, but it\u2019s become like home, a place where we gather and spend hours with friends, eating, drinking and thinking about ideas. Nearby, one of my favourite chefs is Elena Reygadas of Rosetta; I perceive her as an artist. She travels to all these places \u2013 to Ensenada to look for the right fish; to Oaxaca for specific mushrooms. My favourite traditional restaurant is Nicos, a cafeteria in the middle of nowhere. (There\u2019s nothing fancy to it, it\u2019s just amazing food.) Another is Casa Merlos, a restaurant that focuses on mole \u2013 the traditional sauce \u2013 from Puebla. It\u2019s a temple.\u00a0I also spend a lot of time downtown \u2013 in the museums, in the Z\u00f3calo, in the Templo Mayor. It\u2019s a place where jewels can appear: if you are curious enough to go to the Abelardo L Rodriguez Market, for example, you\u2019ll discover a Noguchi mural in the middle of the second floor. There are also wonderful shops there: Remigio Mestas is one of the best places to go for textiles in the country: huipiles (traditional tunics), shirts, dresses and collectables. There\u2019s a language in them. And I love the colours and shapes of Perla Valtierra\u2019s tableware.The motor of my life is the gallery, though: culture is the thing that moves me around the city. There\u2019s a whole new generation of artists and galleries \u2013 Campeche, Pequod Co, Sal\u00f3n Silic\u00f3n \u2013 that are vital here. I follow their programmes closely. But then, you can walk around and just discover something. The other day I found Sal\u00f3n de la Pl\u00e1stica Mexicana, an old institution with not so much artworks, but photographs of artworks. And recently I read a book by \u00c1lvaro Enrigue in which he tells the story of\u00a0the encounter between Moctezuma [an emperor of the Aztec empire] and Cort\u00e9s [the\u00a0Spanish conquistador who overthrew the\u00a0Aztec empire]. I spent three days downtown\u00a0trying to imagine what the M\u0113xihcah\/Aztec empire was like.\u00a0There are all kinds of ways you can connect to Mexico City. It is at all times vibrant and diverse in many ways \u2013 culturally, politically, socially. Not just one layer. That\u2019s the way I relate to the city.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.I remember arriving in Mexico City very vividly. It was a Sunday \u2013 11 November 1984 \u2013 and my dad, who was a very loving, strict<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":298524,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-298523","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298523"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298523\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":298525,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298523\/revisions\/298525"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}