Edificios Revisados (2009 – 2010)

In photographs of disaster, objects become characters. Spines of chairs, fractured tables, and beds hanging out of windows are anthropomorphized. In scenes without people, we can envision the body through its absence. Looking at the flattened floors of a hotel, we can imagine what was inside: lovers quarreling, morning ablutions, someone writing at their table—any of which might be the orange-brown lines we see jutting out from broken beams.

Historically, ruins were used as scenes of moral instruction. Here, the table stands in for the body, and Formica is exposed as a thin laminate skin. Part of the multimedia project Quake/Temblor, the Edificios Revisados series was inspired by my father’s diagnostic photographs of the 1985 Mexico City earthquake and Babel-like illustrations from the 1500s.

Engravings on formica kitchen tabletops, each 38” x 44”

Exhibited internationally, including San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art