Talk: The untold stories of Mexico’s modernist revolution

Join arts journalist and creative Gina Fairley as she steps back in time to this vibrant, cosmopolitan era from the 1920s–1940s, when the post-revolution government entrusted artists to tell the story of a new nation.

Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera may be household names, but who were the other Mexican modernists? 

Come and be immersed in the entwined lives of that inner circle, including muralists Aurora Reyes Flores, José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and photographers Lola Álvarez Bravo, Tina Modotti and Edward Weston. What are their lesser known stories; their passions and politics that shaped a nation and became a global phenomenon, as the fever of ‘Mexicanismo’ swept the United States and Europe. It was a zeal parallel to the almost cultish status for all things Frida today. Fairley considers the reverberations of these legacies, and their continuing impact on artists today.

Gina Fairley is an arts journalist, curator and creative. She was a director at Haines Gallery in California, USA, followed by a decade in Southeast Asia working as a curator, lecturer and commentator, curating major survey exhibitions for the Ateneo Art Gallery and Yuchengco Museum (Manila). Fairley was Regional Editor for Asian Art News and World Sculpture News, and is the current National Visual Art editor for ArtsHub.

Fairley will be leading the International Study Tour The Mexican modernists: passionate loves and colourful lives in April 2026.