Ariana Faye
Allensworth

Cultural worker mobilizing people, memory, and design toward collective liberation.

Ariana Faye
Allensworth

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PROJECTS

Pink Governmentality: Space, Gender, and the Politics of Pink in Mexico City



ROLE

Writer & ResearcherYEAR

2015-2017




A curatorial research project exploring rosa mexicano—a vivid pink central to Mexican visual culture—as both a material and symbolic force in Mexico City’s landscape



Drawing on feminist geography, visual culture studies, and critical theory, this project examines how pink functions as both a tool of governance and a material of resistance in contemporary Mexico City.

Through interviews with feminist cultural workers, municipal officials, and community organizers—as well as visual and material analysis of color use in taxis, transit systems, political propaganda, and artistic practice—Pink Governmentality explores how color operates as a form of soft power: simultaneously aestheticizing liberal political agendas and serving as a medium through which feminist resistance is performed.


The project traces the dual deployment of pink in two intersecting spheres:

State-led Initatives
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Where pink is employed as part of a broader urban branding campaign—most notably during the 2014 CDMX rebranding effort under Mayor Miguel Ángel Mancera, which positioned pink as a symbol of “social capital,” progressive governance, and civic identity. Pink also appears in gender-segregated public transportation measures that deploy the color to signify care, safety, and protection for women in response to widespread street harassment.



Feminist Art  & Activist Interventions
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Where the color is reclaimed and recontextualized by collectives such as Las Hijas de Violencia and artists like Mónica Mayer to confront gender-based violence and reassert spatial agency in public space.  



Drawing on Michel Foucault’s concept of governmentality, this project introduces “pink governmentality” to describe the convergence of aesthetic strategies, gender politics, and neoliberal governance in the urban field. 


This project argues that the saturation of public space with pink—a color often associated with care, safety, and femininity—functions to regulate civic life while obscuring the structural conditions it purports to address. At the same time, the project foregrounds how feminist practitioners appropriate and subvert pink to make visible the limits of state care and to advance alternative forms of social and spatial justice.
STENCILS AND WHEATPASTE POSTERS AT THE STUDIO OF LAS HIJAS DE VIOLENCIA
LAS HIJAS DE VIOLENCIA IN ACTION — MERGING PUNK, PERFORMANCE, AND PROTEST TO DIRECTLY CONFRONT STREET HARASSMENT IN MEXICO CITY

“STREETS WITHOUT HARASSMENT” PROTEST STENCIL COVERED WITH PINK SPRAY PAINT
“WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU WERE HARASSED?” STILL FROM A 2015 VIDEO BY KARLA GARIDO. THE PROMPT ANNOTATES MÓNICA MAYER’S ICONIC QUESTION FROM EL TENDEDERO (“WHEN WAS THE FIRST TIME YOU WERE HARASSED?”), REFRAMING IT WITH “ÚLTIMA / LAST” — A WORD THAT CAN SIMULTANEOUSLY ACKNOWLEDGE THE PERSISTENCE OF GENDERED VIOLENCE OR DECLARES THE FINAL INSTANCE.
STREET INTERVENTION ON A TOY AD TO CHALLENGE GENDER NORMS IN CHILDREN’S PLAY
2016 METRO AD PROMOTING A POPULAR SLOGAN FROM MEXICO CITY’S REBRANDING EFFORT, WHICH MARKED THE CITY’S LEGAL SHIFT FROM FEDERAL DISTRICT (DF) TO MEXICO CITY (CDMX). THE CAMPAIGN INTRODUCED MAGENTA—DUBBED ROSA MEXICANO—AS THE CITY’S NEW SIGNATURE COLOR.

RELEVENT LINKS

 LEARN MORE ABOUT THE COLLABORATION BETWEEN UC BERKELEY AND THE UNIVERSIDAD AUTÓNAMA METROPOLITANA, UNIDAD CUAJIMALPA THAT MADE THIS RESEARCH POSSIBLE



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