The exhibition’s configuration articulates a historical cartography of the MBS, including present and past participants. However, it is an opportunity to examine the challenges, changes, and contributions to both Ballroom Culture and the LGBTQ community in Mexico City, rather than creating a simple timeline. This exhibition does not make any sense without a specific situation: the dissemination activities of the MBS have a designated place, the Hemicycle to Juarez[1] (Figure 4). This monument represents former president Benito Juarez who states in 1867, ‘El respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz[2]’. That represents one of the progressive times in the modern history of Mexico. However, from 2015, every Thursday, the Mexico City Ballroom community has congregated to practice and share BPP. The community considers this action a powerful and symbolic act of visibility and representation in Mexican society, emphasising the significance of the MBS. For that reason, it is essential to connect and articulate with the Memoir and Tolerance Museum[3] in Mexico City. As its title mentions, it is an excellent opportunity to relate to its essential principles, such as tolerance, diversity and inclusion, discrimination, stereotypes and prejudice, national topics, and human rights. Thus, the selection of pieces must relate to what is happening outside the Museum to create a participant interaction with the MBS content and its dissemination practices.

Figure 4. The Hemicycle to Benito Juarez Monument

To analyse and evaluate the exhibition’s impact on the Mexican Ballroom community, it is essential to consider the effects of utilising Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) in combination with Ethnography as a methodology for generating this exhibition and intervention of BPP in a way to externalise and connect what is happening between the Memoir and Tolerance Museum and The Hemicycle to Juarez. Thus, ‘CBPR is an adequate methodology due is expected to, 1) emphasise an active role of community in participatory processes, 2) legitimise multiple forms of knowledge through a variety of data collecting methods, 3) provide discovery and dissemination of the findings, 4) achieve social transformation and social justice directly or indirectly, and 5) researchers and community participants equally share control over the research, results, and outputs’ (Amauchi et al. 2019, p. 1). 

Thus, the above statement resonates with a transdisciplinary curation (Lehnerer, 2023) to compensate as state Amauchi et al., ‘the widespread tendency of asymmetric relationships between researchers or experts and participants’ (2019, p.1). Thus, CBPR ‘implies building relationships with community members and establishing partnerships’ (Amauchi et al. 2019, p. 3) without romanticising friendship, therefore looking to engage stakeholders throughout the research and curatorial process. Then ‘CBPR is grounded in the recognition of the participants’ identification, as being part of a community…connects with a specific community, which can be a community of interest or a geographically defined community. In CBPR, community contributes with their knowledge on the design, planning, and implementation of the research project, valued as participant and co-owner of the research’ (Ibid, 2019, p. 4). To sum up, praxis concerning ‘CBPR is a continuous cycle of action-reflection-action’ (Amauchi et al. 2019, p. 7) connecting with a constant reflexivity between participants and a transdisciplinary curation.

---

[1]  For more details: https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=121114

[2] Translation: Respect for Others’ Rights Is Peace.

[3] For more details: https://www.myt.org.mx/