This exhibition offers only a glimpse of the remarkable work created by the Art and Costume departments for Pedro Páramo, a Netflix film directed by Rodrigo Prieto and based on a cornerstone of Latin American literature: Juan Rulfo's (1917-1986) dreamlike and immortal novel.

In this exhibition, you'll discover the seams that bind costume design with art direction, both drawing almost entirely from the world of Mexican craftsmanship to faithfully embody this elusive novel rooted in magical realism.

According to its creators, bringing this story to life was an unforgettable experience: the tragedy of a son searching for his father, and of Pedro Páramo—the landowner of La Media Luna—whose cruelty, despotism, and obsession with a woman named Susana San Juan drags the people of Comala and himself toward death, annihilating that town, the silent witness to a tale that ends in desolation and abandonment, in ghostly ruins inhabited by wandering souls.

Adapting Pedro Páramo for the screen posed a monumental challenge for both departments, not only because the literary work itself is challenging, but also because the path they chose differs from the one typically taken by costume designers and art directors, who generally source their materials from commercial suppliers. The creators of Pedro Páramo took an alternative route, one that would give the story, the town, and the era a more distinctive identity—a path undeniably rich in rewards but steep, long, slow, and winding. It led them across various Mexican states to find artisans capable of crafting the pieces they had designed for the film: weavers working with backstrap and colonial looms (also called pedal looms), embroiderers, jewelers, leatherworkers, charro tailors, hatmakers specializing in Revolutionary-era styles, sandal makers, prop craftsmen... And then came perhaps the most difficult task: convincing them to revive ancestral techniques that could recreate the production methods of that time—techniques relegated to obscurity, some already extinct. As you'll see, everyone involved did exceptional work.

It's worth noting that they found the ideal sandal maker in a place coincidentally named Comala, in the state of Colima—where seven hundred pairs of period-accurate sandals were made by hand for the film's extras. Though this wasn't the region that inspired Rulfo, the author may have chosen the name, derived from the Nahuatl words comal-li—"place of the comales," those enormous clay griddles where tortillas are cooked—not only for its sound but also for its quality of transforming things through the heat of fire. In Pedro Páramo, the fire of thwarted passion consumes and scorches itself, burned by transgression.

We hope this exhibition, in addition to honoring the talent of the Costume and Art department heads, also celebrates, dignifies, and reaffirms the value of the work done by artisans throughout Mexico. The label for each garment details the name, craft, technique, materials, and place of origin of every artisan who contributed.