MIRADA MADRID MIRADA
Series of 4 photographs mounted on aluminum (2007)
3 pieces measuring 110.5 cm X 37 cm; one, 74 cm X 55 cm
In November of 2007, I participated in a collective exhibition entitled Madrid Mirada. The exhibition’s curatorial proposal was based on inviting fourteen artists from different Latin American countries to work in Madrid for a week on a photography-based project.
My contribution consisted of a series of four diptychs, which explores the theme of real-estate speculation, and how it almost always tends to violate the urban and architectural integrity of a city. The work, carried out with help from Céline Domengie and Martín Cambefort, revolves around the Cuatro Torres (Four Towers) project: four colossal buildings that symbolically house the headquarters of four of the largest and most powerful Spanish corporations. Sadly, I must admit that the Four Towers would fit in perfectly well in Panama City’s present urban landscape, which is riddled with dozens upon dozens of high-rise monstrosities, products of a recent speculation-based construction boom. But, as Manuel Sendón and Xosé Luís Suárez (the exhibition’s curators) have well stated, in Madrid the Cuatro Torres “break completely with an architectural aesthetic based on the significance of a historical past”.
The title of the series alludes to my presence in each of the diptychs, and to how my facial expressions, my “miradas” (looks) for Madrid Mirada, convey the astonishment, impotence and disenchantment caused by the unrelenting and ubiquitous advance of a type of urban development devoid of environmental conscience and social responsibility.