Threads of Time: Simultaneous Temporalities in the Work of Mario Schjetnan

Landscape is never simply of the present. Ecological processes, cultural traditions, inherited structures, and everyday acts of inhabitation unfold according to different rhythms and durations. In the work of Mario Schjetnan, Hon'26, and Grupo de Diseño Urbano (GDU), these layers do not belong to successive periods but remain active at once. Past and present surface through one another, revealing landscape as a condition of simultaneous temporalities.

Across parks, forests, wetlands, and post-industrial landscapes, Mario Schjetnan and GDU approach landscape as a living medium in which environmental change, cultural memory, and public life shape one another. Rooted in Mexican history and culture, their work brings existing landscapes and traditions into dialogue with contemporary civic life. Their projects operate as repositories of cultural memory, where inherited landscapes are renewed through restoration, adaptation, and daily occupation. In doing so, they resist distinctions between nature and culture, preservation and transformation, revealing landscape as an evolving record of collective life.

Threads of Time brings together three landscapes in Mexico City—Xochimilco Ecological Park, Chapultepec Forest, and Bicentennial Park—to trace these relationships across different scales and histories. The exhibit includes a dedicated section developed with our Partner in Education, The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF), featuring films produced in conjunction with Mario Schjetnan and GDU’s 2025 Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize.

Translucent textiles, projections, drawings, photographs, and living plants transform the gallery into a layered and shifting landscape. Visitors move through this labyrinth of images, light, and shadow, where elements overlap, disappear, and re-emerge. The exhibition makes temporal layering spatial. Different moments become simultaneously visible—partially revealed, continually changing, and never fully resolved.

This exhibit is now open through May 9, 2027.