Carsten Holler's signature spiralling slides have become a permanent part of Mexico City's architecture. Mexico City Slides, a new installation of four monumental silver slides, is now installed at Arte Abierto Polanco in Antara, an upscale open-air shopping mall in the Polanco district, where the public can ride them. The work was commissioned by Arte Abierto together with the architecture practice Sordo Madaleno Arquitectos.

The four slides vary considerably in scale, ranging from 39 to 125 feet in height and 102 to 295 feet in length, and descend from different points across the complex before converging on a shared exit. Up to four people can ride at the same time, entering from locations including family restaurants, Google's offices, the Rosewood Hotel and the Arte Abierto art space. Holler has described the slide as an equalizer, and the sensation of riding one as a voluptuous panic upon an otherwise lucid mind. He once said it is impossible to travel down a slide without smiling.

Slides have been a central motif in Holler's work since 1998, in what he treats as a work-in-progress franchise. Different versions have appeared in museums and public spaces across Europe and the United States, from Test Site at Tate Modern in London in 2006 to slides at the New Museum in New York in 2011, the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein in 2014, Palazzo Strozzi in Florence in 2018 and the Danish Architecture Centre in Copenhagen in 2020.

In Mexico City, the installation extends that idea into everyday commercial life. Visible from Antara's gardens, plazas and pedestrian promenade, the slides thread through a working mall, so that shoppers, office workers and hotel guests meet the artwork in the course of an ordinary day. For Arte Abierto, the commission is part of a wider programme of bringing large-scale contemporary art into public and commercial spaces across the city.