Curated by Cuauhtémoc Medina and Alejandra Labastida

Chto Delat is a group of writers, philosophers, and artists that takes its name, which translates to “What is to be done?” from the title of an 1863 novel by the political revolutionary Nikolay Chernyshevsky (a title lifted by Lenin for his own 1902 tract). Since its founding in 2003, the Saint Petersburg–based collective has applied the eponymous query to both the specific situation in Russia and the larger systems of global capitalism. For its first solo presentation in Mexico, Chto Delat tests what value a self-organized collective holds today—a question made all the more pressing in the wake of the Russian government’s increasing restriction of freedom of assembly. Accompanied by a catalogue compiling the group’s key texts in both Spanish and English, the survey centers around a new film that looks to the Zapatistas for an alternative model of civil resistance.  

— Kate Sutton