A Hacienda for a Russian Inmigrant

A Hacienda in the New York sky for a Russian Inmigrant

“I was looking for my own identity. I wanted something more rough-edged, a place where I could throw bold colors onto the wall and didn’t have to walk carefully.” Boris Fishman says.

…At Oaxaca “I was standing in the central plaza, listening to the bells from the cathedral,” Mr. Fishman recalled. “Shops were open; teenagers were hanging around, flirting; families were strolling about. The idea of evenings devoted to leisure and conversation, brass bands playing spontaneously, women dancing on the cobblestone streets — I felt connected to it because it felt so European.”

He was reminded of Minsk, the city in Belarus where he had spent his childhood. Six months and $15,000 later, he had produced a series of spaces that captured the look and especially the vitality of semitropical places in Mexico, albeit within the unlikely setting of a drab high-rise.

The showstopper, drawn with a felt-tipped marker on a living room wall, is a menu from a favorite restaurant in Xalapa, featuring such items as “enchiladas de la casa (4) MX $47” and “tostadas de pollo (3) MX $42.” To the right are black and white photographs of Guatemalan refugees in Mexico, surrounded by frames hand-painted on the wall and reminiscent of displays found in restaurants in Mexican university towns, where work by a local artist is invariably found on the wall next to the menu.

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