Quiero felicitar a Monica Arreola, arquitecta y artista Tijuanense por su inclusión en la Whitney Bienal del 2022 con su proyecto desinterés social.
I would like to congratulate Monica Arreola, architect, and artist from Tijuana for her selection to the Whitney Biennial 2022 with her project “desinterés social”.
Para ver la obra / To see the project: https://www.monicaarreola.com/desinteres-social
https://whitney.org/exhibitions/2022-biennial
Aquí un breve texto sobre una de las fotografías de Arreola . Here is a brief text reagarding one of Arreola’s photographs.
This photograph hides nothing. The photograph makes visible the absence of a home. Three rectangular structures of derelict or still borne houses are centered in the composition, each with two dark square openings as if staring back at the viewer. In the foreground, a landscape of dead lawn patches and a few invasive greeneries create a datum for the aborted homes. In the background, the city crouching on distant hills dissipating under a gray mist of a cold morning. There is no sign or sigh of human life. The landscape is desolate. The only fragment of urbanity is a semi-finished perimeter wall of an adjacent gated community displaying a couple of insipid graffiti tags.
The camera angle frames a one-point perspective, an architectural graphic device, and a virtual view of the world, unlike how we see with our own eyes. By looking at the image, we do not know why the photographer used that point of view. There is no accurate way to be in a place. However, I cannot seem to divert my attention from the writing on the walls, the scribble of signs or words in black outlines, and others in faint orange. Tagged with no apparent order, nevertheless widespread on the surface to produce an aesthetic mood of the objects. The photo also has cumulus clouds!
Rene Peralta