Milagros is thrilled to announce that many of their  artists and makers in Mexico work is now in the V&A Museum in collaboration with the Frida Kahlo – Making Her Self Up.  The exhibition presents an extraordinary collection of personal artefacts and clothing belonging to the iconic Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. Locked away for 50 years after her death, this collection has never before been exhibited outside Mexico. It is on until 4th November 2018.

Friday Kahlo was an avant-garde surrealist and great lover of Mexican folk art and traditions. Yet careful attention to her mother country’s exceptional folk art traditions shows that surrealism is practically imbued in its culture, with angels, devils, skeletons and virgins living comfortably alongside the vernacular of a modern capitalist society. Never having undergone a protestant reformation nor a proletarian revolution, Mexico remains deeply enmeshed in a religious and agrarian imaginary from which it looks slightly askance at the break-neck speed of Western technological society. No matter how fast your internet speed or big your picture hat, underneath we are all skeletons! It is Milagros’s great pleasure to make the connections between Kahlo’s work and the folk art she celebrated more vivid to the V&A’s visitors.

Milagros – Where the Living and the Dead Go Shopping

Tom Bloom set up Milagros in 1991, importing Mexican folk art, glassware, tiles and ceramics to sell in his Queens Road café in Bristol. The business venture was inspired by his visit to Mexico the previous year when he fell in love with the flamboyant, eclectic beauty of its folk art and crafts. A shop would give visibility to these little known delights as well as help sustain the fragile network of makers he met on his travels. Tom met the textile designer Juliette Tuke in 1997 and they entered partnership together. That year the business moved to Columbia Rd, home to the colourful and rowdy East End flower market. A more complimentary setting you couldn’t find. The shop’s name, Milagros, means ‘miracle’ in Spanish and conjures the proximity of the Gods in daily Mexican life. But this toe-hold of Mexico on the streets of rainy London, filled with grimacing skulls, iridescent glazes, winking patterns and exotic carved chimeras can feel like a miracle of its own to the casual passer by.

Friends of Milagros – Hola!

We hope you will join us for our upcoming book launch of Francisco Cantú’s book The Line Becomes A River, a New York Times bestseller and recent Book of the Week on Radio 4, on Tuesday 20th March from 6.30pm. The event will take place at our Milagros shop, 61 Columbia Rd, E2.

Tuesday 20th March from 6.30pm. The event will take place at our Milagros shop, 61 Columbia Rd, E2.

The book is an unflinching account of Cantú’s four years spent working as a US Border Patrol agent along the US-Mexican border, from 2008-2012, before quitting amidst a swirl of harrowing experiences and stress related nightmares. There is, however, no need for a swat team of Netflix screenwriters to concoct the almost constant tragedy and acts of mercy that Cantú’s tales of the border record in episodic bursts. As a third generation Mexican migrant, border agent, pursuant and rescuer of desert-parched and fearful migrants the author cuts a controversial figure. The book is part sobering account of this brutal border regime and the lives it devastates, and part self-examination of his role within it. The Line Becomes A River pivots on the enigma of why Cantú chose to commit to the defence of an abstract line drawn by politicians and geometers, yet provides many answers through the profound insights his police work allowed.

‘Stunningly good. Beautiful, smart, raw, sad, poetic and humane… It’s the best thing I’ve read for ages’, James Rebanks, author of THE SHEPHERD’S LIFE

Cantú will read from his book and there will be a short discussion, after which all guests are invited to a Mezcal tasting introduced by the author.

Don’t miss out on the 10% reduction on all our hand-crafted Mexican glassware, ceramics and objet d’art that we’ll be giving away on all in-store sales that day.

Biography:

Francisco Cantú served as an agent for the United States Border Patrol from 2008 to 2012, working in the deserts of Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. A former Fulbright fellow, he is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and a 2017 Whiting Award. His writing and translations have been featured in The Best American Essays, Harper’s, n+1, Orion, and Guernica, as well as on This American Life. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.

Read more at https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/1114414/the-line-becomes-a-river/#aep1XV3q1vMFOhcp.99