The exhibition Helen by artist Álvaro Urbano pays tribute to the work and practice of Helen Fowler O’Gorman, highlighting her sensitivity to and fascination with the botanical diversity of Mexico’s central highlands. Different times and memories converge around Casa Cueva, one of the most emblematic works of Mexican architecture. Built in the mid-twentieth century in Pedregal de San Ángel, Casa Cueva brings together the histories of the artist and her husband, the architect Juan O’Gorman, who designed, built, and inhabited the house and its garden.

Urbano imagines this site as a silent witness that preserves the layers of accumulated time, manifested both in its architectural materiality and in its vegetal dimension. The atmosphere conjured by Urbano is inspired by the house and Helen Fowler O’Gorman’s 1961 book Mexican Flowering Trees and Plants: a visual journey through the botanical diversity of central Mexico, accompanied by anthropological observations on the relationship between humans and plants. These layers are joined by references to the lithic world of Juan O’Gorman’s petro-murals, while traces of the subsequent changes made by artist Helen Escobedo can also be perceived. Rather than offering a historiographical reading, these presences function as narrative threads that overlap and enter into dialogue with one another, interweaving the murmurs of the stories that inhabit Casa Cueva.

Helen is the latest chapter in Urbano’s artistic practice, which can be understood as an archaeology of past desires and intentions. By creating atmospheres that replicate specific architectural spaces and gestures, the artist excavates the narratives inscribed within these sites. He draws on strategies from theater and cinema, creating immersive environments that unfold as liminal, dreamlike situations and transform the gallery into a vessel for ghosts and apparitions. An affective response to built environments is a recurring element of his work: recreating and reimagining architecture becomes an intimate exploration of the subjectivity of other artists. This overlay reveals how these spaces can be understood as functional, innovative, or destined to be forgotten.