B-LA-M Festival presents at ‘El Hub MX’ BETWEEN THE BODY AND BELONGING, FRANCISCO DIEGO STELLA GEPPERT

B-LA-M Festival presents
‘El Hub MX’, Calle de Mesones 86, Centro, Ciudad de México, CDMX

FRANCISCO DIEGO STELLA GEPPERT
BETWEEN THE BODY AND BELONGING

HAUNT, Berlin / 2nd Floor / Curated Shows / Room 15
Opening Night: Thu, Oct 23, 6 – 11 pm
Duration: Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, Oct 24 – 26, 2 – 6 pm

BETWEEN THE BODY AND BELONGING
The German Stella Geppert and Mexican artist Francisco Diego engage in a dialogue between matter and language. Through movements, objects, and hybrid words, they explore the shifting boundary between the personal and the collective, between the loss and the search for identity. Their work emerges from the friction between languages and territories: when one tongue merges with another, a new sense of belonging arises. In that in-between space —where the body remembers and language transforms — both artists ask what it still means to inhabit without erasing what was already there.
In the dialogue between Stella Geppert and Francisco Diego, a pair of embroidered socks and a wall covered in words speak about what is lost when we try to fit in. The phrases mix languages like someone searching for a place where their voice feels their own. Between what is seen and what is left unsaid, the works reveal the distance between how we are seen and how we truly feel. There is tenderness, but also fatigue: empathy appears as a fragile gesture against the habit of not looking. In that honesty, simplicity becomes depth.

Francisco Diego’s work involves a sensitive exploration of the layers that make up identity: gender, personal history, and emotional heritage. Through performance, installation, and soft sculpture, Francisco Diego proposes a poetics of fragility in which what is normally considered ‘insignificant’ – embroidery, domesticity, transience – becomes an act of resistance and remembrance.
En las obras de Francisco Diego hay una búsqueda sensible por desenredar las capas que conforman la identidad: el género, la historia personal, la herencia emocional. A través de performance, instalación y escultura blanda, Francisco Diego propone una poética de la fragilidad, donde lo que usualmente se considera “menor” —el bordado, lo doméstico, lo efímero— se vuelve un acto de resistencia y de memoria.
In den Arbeiten von Francisco Diego gibt es eine sensible Suche nach den Schichten, die die Identität ausmachen: Geschlecht, persönliche Geschichte, emotionales Erbe. Durch Performance, Installation und weiche Skulptur schlägt Fran eine Poetik der Fragilität vor, in der das, was normalerweise als „unbedeutend” angesehen wird – Stickerei, das Häusliche, das Vergängliche – zu einem Akt des Widerstands und der Erinnerung wird.

Stella Geppert’s work focuses on embodied communication. She explores the energetic states of the body and unconscious movements. Sculptural and performative work is therefore work on and with relationships, which is why she investigates the question of the specific and transformative states of body and space, material and touch, contact and resonance.
El trabajo de Stella Geppert se centra en la comunicación encarnada. Explora los estados energéticos del cuerpo y los movimientos inconscientes. El trabajo escultórico y performativo es, por lo tanto, un trabajo sobre y con las relaciones, por lo que investiga la cuestión de los estados específicos y transformadores del cuerpo y el espacio, la materia y el tacto, el contacto y la resonancia.
Stella Gepperts Arbeit konzentriert sich auf verkörperte Kommunikation. Sie erforscht die energetischen Zustände des Körpers und unbewusste Bewegungen. Skulpturale und performative Arbeit ist daher Arbeit an und mit Beziehungen, weshalb sie sich mit der Frage nach den spezifischen und transformativen Zuständen von Körper und Raum, Material und Berührung, Kontakt und Resonanz auseinandersetzt.

B-LA-M Festival Presents ‘The Hub’: An Ephemeral Space Bringing Together Art Projects from Berlin, Los Angeles, and Mexico City. MEXICO CITY – As part of the B-LA-M Festival, ‘El Hub MX,’ an independent art and creative space curated by artists and curators, is presented through an innovative four-day intervention in a building in the city. This unique project will serve as a platform for other art spaces and collectives in Berlin, Los Angeles, and Mexico City that, due to various circumstances, are temporarily without exhibition venues.

El Festival B-LA-M Presenta ‘The Hub’: Un Espacio Efímero que Reúne a Proyectos Artísticos de Berlín, Los Ángeles y Ciudad de México CIUDAD DE MÉXICO – En el marco del Festival B-LA-M, se presenta ‘El Hub MX’, un espacio artístico y creativo independiente coordinado por artistas y curadores, a través de una innovadora intervención de cuatro días en un edificio de la ciudad. Este proyecto único servirá como plataforma para otros espacios y colectivos artísticos de Berlín, Los Ángeles y Ciudad de México que, por diversas circunstancias, se encuentran temporalmente sin sus sedes de exhibición.

Co-organized by Laura Reséndiz, Carl Baratta, Max Presbeill, and Daniel Wiesenfeld

https://www.franciscodiego.art
http://www.stella-geppert.de
https://www.b-la-m.org/

(Photo: Cristina Robalo, 2025)