Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico - The California-based art collaboration known as 'Fallen Fruit' will open ¡Estas Como Mango! at Puerto Vallarta's Oficina de Proyectos Culturales (OPC) in May 2015.

Originally conceived in 2004 by David Burns, Matias Viegener and Austin Young, Fallen Fruit began by mapping fruit trees growing on or over public property in Los Angeles. Today, the collaboration has expanded to include serialized public projects and site-specific installations and happenings in various cities around the world.

¡Estas Como Mango! means that "You are like a Mango" or "you are sweet, perfect and ripe!" It's a term of affection and adoration in Mexico. Of course, we believe everyone is perfect and everyone is ripe. This exhibition of contemporary art and public practice will be the first exhibition by the Fallen Fruit collective in Mexico.

Cultural exchange and contemporary art making is important to the vibrancy of a 21st-century transnational community. The artists recognize that California was once Mexico and that Latin-American heritage is part of West-coast culture, and want to create meaning from the nuances of these histories. This art installation will re-contextualize local narratives using fruit and images of Puerto Vallarta as a subject, object and symbol.

The art works will respond to people and place and use local fruit as a connector. Fruit is a part of the history of a place. In the case of Puerto Vallarta, they found that the mango is paramount to local culture. Mangos were imported to this tropical beach town and part of its foundation in terms of urban planning, infrastructure, and culture.

This area was a place to harvest salt for the mines, then a plantation, a village, and now a town — where the culture of the plantation was replaced by a culture of tourism. From this context, David Burns and Austin Young will create new art works that celebrate the history of place and fruit as a connector of cultural meaning.

About OPC

Located at Juarez #598, at the corner of Aldama in downtown Puerto Vallarta, Oficina de Proyectos Culturales (Office for Cultural Projects, or OPC) is an independent non-profit arts organization dedicated to fostering dialogue through exhibitions, round table discussions, public art and arts education programs. OPC works with artists, architects, curators, academics, and writers who explore ideas that shape our city and to develop cultural programming that is firmly rooted in Puerto Vallarta, yet international in scope.