The references to the acclaimed Mexican architect Luis Barragán have been recurring in the work of Mexican artist Iñaki Bonillas. The first time Bonillas referred to Barragán was in 2003, on the occasion of his participation in the exhibition ‘The Air is Blue’, curated by Hans-Ulrich Obrist and held at the Casa Luis Barragán, studio and home of the architect. Two years later, Barragán’s traces appeared in Barcelona through Bonillas’ Intervention to the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion. Without altering at all the architecture of the Barcelona building, Bonillas subtly wrapped with “Barragán pink colour” the minimalism of the iconic German architect.

In 2016, Bonillas returned to the Casa Barragán to develop a new exhibition project: Secretos (secrets). On this occasion, the artist focused in the house negative spaces, those places that are not visible to the visitors walking through the inte-rior’s building. All those elements behind curtains and doors, inside drawers and closets. The starting point of this exercise was conceived after realizing that, given its distilled nature, there is a clear intention in Barragán’s architecture and most specifically in his home’s, to conceal everything that can disturb the harmony and poetics of his architectural ideals: the accumulation of objects, papers, useless stuff; in other words, the disorder of everyday life. Bonillas’ project was conceived, then, as a broader meditation around the human need to keep hidden not only certain objects, but also emotions, thoughts, confidences, memories and, in short, secrets of all kinds that we try to keep in the shadow. Through a series of artistic proposals, Bonillas seeked to delve into the “universe of the secrets”, in a rather figurative way.