It was always mañana. For the next week that was all I heard – mañana, a lovely word
and one that probably means heaven.
Jack Kerouac, On the Road, 1957

It Was Always Mañana

The Proyecto H Residency Program presents It Was Always Mañana, the first solo exhibition of multidisciplinary artist Marta Ibarrondo in Mexico City, curated by Sofía Sáenz de Santa María. The works on display were created between 2022, 2023, and 2024 as part of the On The Road series, where the artist references key moments from Jack Kerouac’s famous work of the same name.

For the past ten years, Ibarrondo, originally from Spain and residing in the United States for the last thirty years, has been working on the Alexandria project. In this project, she uses canvas, objects, paper, and acrylic paint as mediums to paint words and phrases drawn from the major texts that have shaped her life—books she considers timeless. As of today, the project includes On The Road, Animal Farm, The Bible, The Bluest Eye, White Teeth, and L’écume des Jours.

In It Was Always Mañana, Ibarrondo depicts the experiences of Sal Paradise from On the Road. Through this journey, she illustrates the rebellion, spontaneity, and optimism of youth—ideals often associated with the “American Dream.” However, in contrast to that promise, the current state of the U.S. reflects a nation trapped in apathy, pessimism, and conflict. Ibarrondo’s work invites us to ask: How did we get here? As the characters traverse the highways of the U.S., they evoke a deep nostalgia for a better past, the sorrow of not reaching it, and the anxiety of an uncertain future. This encourages reflection on both the past and present, revealing that, at its core, little has changed.

The exhibition will be open from October 23 to 31, 2024, coinciding with the seventh anniversary of the gallery’s Residency Program. The works are painted on original maps—the geography of each one corresponding to the episode Ibarrondo references in the painted phrase—dated from the mid-1940s to 1959, which the artist acquired from second-hand markets in New York or online over the past five years.