Cómo están de ausentes las cosas queridas

In 1932, it cost almost only fifteen cents for a cup of coffee and ten cents for a piece of bread in most cafés de chinos. The Chinese-operated cafes at that time, open around the clock, used to offer fast and cheap food to feed the low-income working-class and students in town. During the fifties and sixties, this type of cafe reached its peak with its recognisable Mexican cuisine made by adapting local recipes with touches of Chinese influence. “One always returns to the places of the past where life was loved and so understands the absence of those dear things…” Named after the lyrics from the song, Las simples cosas [The simple things], composed by César Isella and Armando Tejada and performed by Chavela Vargas, the title of this exhibition speaks to the shared experience of how places, where happiness once existed, inevitably change and become filled with absences over time, leaving only a reflection in the mirror of one's memories. Borrowing from these poetic lines, this significant reference stands as a testament to the nowadays declining cafés de chinos and the dilemma of cultural hybridisation. The site-specific installation in the exhibition consists of a staged café de chino scenario. The landscape of these cafés becomes the focus in which the fragmented space reflects the transformation of collective memories in this temporal scene, absent of human beings. Within this context, the exhibition becomes a path that implicitly reveals both the observation and the understanding of the few cafés that continue to exist. Observing people, their histories, their relationships and the social circumstances in which they live is an imperative part of the narrative in Working Hard’s projects. This may stem from their origin in Taiwan, where people have various complicated national identities, which has led to their curiosity about migration and the pursuit of vanishing histories under modernisation. Throughout the field and archival research about cafés de chinos in Mexico, Working Hard intends to unveil the soon-to-be-forgotten social landscapes beyond the well-known Mexican history narrative by conjuring the memories of a distinct, culturally hybridised immigrant history.