View of Jill Magid's exhibition "Woman With Sombrero," 2013. Courtesy Art in General.
“Woman with Sombrero” is the first part of artist Jill Magid’s ongoing exploration of the legacy of Luis Barragán, the Pritzker Prize-winning Mexican architect (1902-1988). Barragán’s professional archive and copyright to much of his work was sold to Rolf Fehlbaum (chairman of Vitra, a furniture design company) and his wife, Federica Zanco, who live in Switzerland, where it now resides; access to Barragán’s archive has been notoriously difficult to access and study. At Art in General, Magid has great fun with the threat of possible copyright infringement: unable to get her hands on one of Barragán’s Butaca chairs, for example, the artist instead displays a photograph of a version produced by Vitra itself.