Death, preservation, belief, beauty, and excess form the central field of Damien Hirst’s work.

The catalogue accompanies Damien Hirst: To Live Forever (For a While), the large-scale exhibition at Museo Jumex in Mexico City, shown from March 23 to August 25, 2024. Organized in close collaboration with the artist and with advisory curator Ann Gallagher, the exhibition presented a broad overview of Hirst’s work from 1986 to 2019 and marked his first major museum exhibition in Mexico.

More than fifty works from over fifteen international collections examine the ways in which Hirst returns repeatedly to mortality, medical systems, religion, display, science, wealth, and the desire to resist disappearance. The exhibition included installations, sculptures, and paintings, with major series such as Natural History, Medicine Cabinets, Spin Paintings, Cherry Blossoms, spot paintings, and butterfly works.

The formaldehyde works occupy a central position within this reflection. Pieces such as Death Denied use preserved animals to confront the viewer with the tension between life and death, spectacle and scientific display. The Medicine Cabinets refer to pharmaceutical order and the promise of cure, while the butterfly paintings and collages transform fragile organic material into decorative and symbolic images of beauty, transience, and belief.

The Mexican context gives the exhibition an additional layer. Hirst has described Mexico as a second home, and motifs connected to death, ritual, and the Day of the Dead resonate with recurring themes in his work. Presented as part of Museo Jumex’s tenth anniversary programme, the exhibition situates Hirst’s practice between contemporary art, mortality, popular imagery, and the long cultural history of confronting death through objects and images.