Museum of Sex in NoMad, NYC Shows Mexico City's Amparo & Manuel Foundation in a US First

The Museum of Sex in NoMad is hosting "The Life Force: Portraits from the Amparo & Manuel Foundation," the first time the Mexico City-based collection has been shown in the United States. It opened on April 23.

The foundation is an organization focused on education, human development and cultural engagement, and the show was organized in collaboration with it. It brings together 45 works across painting, sculpture, drawing and photography.

The organizing idea is the psychoanalytic pairing of Eros and Thanatos, the life instinct and the death drive. The exhibition asks what it means to be alive inside a body that is fragile by definition, and how the sex drive persists even in the face of death. Figures appear in moments of reflection and exploration, while cracks running through bodies and settings suggest the stresses beneath everyday composure. Intimacy is framed as a spark of recognition: being real, being seen, being unveiled.

Artists include Amoako Boafo, Tracey Emin, Bert Stern and Oh de Laval. One of Stern's works in the show is his photograph Marilyn Monroe Nude on a Bed. Time Out New York notes that what ties the selection together is not style but a shared preoccupation with vulnerability, desire and the unease of being looked at.

Tam Gryn, curator and managing director at the Museum of Sex Miami, describes the body as a space where Eros and Thanatos exist in constant tension. In her words, the works hold the complexity between presence and disappearance, and show intimacy as a form of resistance against decay.

The museum's own Instagram has also said the exhibition is coming to Museum of Sex Miami.

The Museum of Sex is at 233 Fifth Avenue, in NoMad.

(Details are drawn from points that agree across reports by Time Out New York, Artdaily.)