Cucas Vienen de Noche

2025 | May 1st, 2025 

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Solo Exhibition | Casa Lü Sur | Mexico City

Cucas Vienen de Noche (Roaches Come at Night) is a site-specific solo exhibition culminating from a one-month residency at Casa Lü Sur. Situated within the traditional Tlalpan district in Mexico City, the body of work entered into a direct dialogue with the domestic architecture and lush, sprawling gardens of a colonial-style familial home.

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The exhibition's title employs a subversive linguistic play on the Mexican slang cucas, referring simultaneously to the cockroach (cucaracha) and a colloquial term for female anatomy. Through this double entendre, Pascale Jean interrogates the creepy crawlies of the collective psyche: the hidden, the repressed, and the systemic shaming of female sexuality.

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By juxtaposing the abject (the insect) with the intimate (the body), Jean highlights the absurdity of sexual stigma. The resulting works are deeply informed by the chromatic intensity of the Mexico City landscape and the historical textures of the residency site, transforming psychological discomfort into a vibrant, defiant visual language.
 

A central element of the exhibition's visual identity was the integration of cartulinas : the fluorescent, neon cardboards ubiquitous among Mexico City’s street vendors. By utilizing these high-saturation, ephemeral materials as structural frames, Jean performs an act of artistic elevation, transmuting the mundane into a formal gallery context.

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This choice serves as a dual tribute: it honors the vibrant, informal economy of the Tlalpan neighborhood while interrogating the hierarchies of value within the art world. The neon cartulinas act as a rhythmic, chromatic boundary, anchoring the work in the lived reality of the Mexican streetscape.
 

Casa Lü Sur is an international residency program focused on "Lü" - the body as a temporary vessel and site of exploration.
Photos by Rubén Garay