When Allen Ginsberg visited Mérida on New Year’s Eve on the brink of 1954, he wrote, in his diaries, of partying with the mayor and dozens of men and women in “blue lace dresses and stark black and white or pink grand costumes.” “Why have I no tuxedo?” he asked himself. “I was not prepared in my travels to meet so proud a manifestation of wealth and style. Like many creatives who visit the city, the American poet was immediately struck by Mérida’s quiet glamour and artistic verve. Among them, there are those who decide to stay— a number that seems to grow each year, putting Mérida on the map of thriving artistic communities. One of the major draws is its abundance of abandoned haciendas, which gives artists and designers beautiful not-so-blank canvases in which to restore, build, showcase work, and play. But aside from real estate, it’s the region’s colorful facades, large expanses of nature, and rich cultural heritage that provides endless inspiration to creative-minded visitors from Beat poets to contemporary gallerists. Everywhere you go in the Yucatán, there seems to be a natural flair for whimsical style that rises from the agave-planted soil.
Today’s expat community in Mérida includes decorated American chef Jeremiah Tower, a pioneer of California Craftsman cuisine (the James Beard Award-winning Chef David Sterling, who moved to Mérida and founded the Los Dos cooking school, passed in 2016); Argentinian Nicolas Malleville, the perfumer behind the ubiquitous Coqui Coqui scents and their painstakingly chic one-suite villas; American interior designers Laura Kirar and Marjorie Skouras; and Steve Hanson and Tuesday Yates, the couple behind buzzy L.A. contemporary art space China Art Objects Galleries, which has been transplanted to Mérida with them and their poodles. Also among the community are author Laureen Vonnegut (a cousin of Kurt), architect Bruce Bananto, and interior designer John Prentice Powell, who, upon moving from New York to Yucatán in 2001 to renovate abandoned homes, became Mérida’s unofficial mayor and man about town.
Then there’s Cuban-American artist Jorge Pardo, whose sunlit home in Mérida— he divides his time between here and New York— is an embarrassment of sensory riches. Think avocado green walls, cenote-blue floor tile, bright red floor-to-ceiling curtains covering walls of geometrically staggered windows, and a golden-yellow kitchen that faces a swimming pool surrounded by lush palms, banana leaf plants, and spindly cacti. The entire space is reflective of his whimsical approach to sculpture and design; Pardo never shies of color or exaggerated shapes, whether designing lotus-like pendant lights, museum-wide installations, or Huniik, a Mérida restaurant run by local chef Roberto Solís, where cane chairs sit on vivid blue tile flooring.
The late James Brown, who died in 2020, was a beloved painter, printmaker, and ceramicist who rose to fame in the ‘80s East Village art scene. His home, which belonged to him and his wife Alexandra, features rich blue walls and clay red-patterned tiles, brass canopy beds, and of course, many of the artist’s large-scale graphic works on canvas. Large windows and washed, weathered walls are signatures of the region’s style and an example of the ways in which artist expats are reviving the area while paying homage to its history of wealth and style.
