Curatorial Statement

“What the map fails to supply, the human mind (or human yearning) sometimes hast the power to conjure. It seems somehow easier to conjure up possibility out of a map than out of the sheer ether; perhaps we imagine the coordinates of latitude and longitude as a safety net. ”

Stephen S. Hall

A few years ago, as part of an oral documentation project for a historiographic institution, I felt the urgency of having a graphic supplement that would complement the information with tangible material. As a first phase, I began a process of comparative mapping between stories of migrants from different communities who had the same nostalgia as a connector between their homeland and their place of residence. The amount of information collected about the emotional space between these two geographical spaces took on more body and presence than in the descriptions of the landscapes, flavors, smells, and sounds they had experienced. And it is in that space possible Aztlan in which I decided to connect with them to map their existence within a first-world historical gap.

The beauty of listening to them weave their story in multi-sensory spaces confronted my ability as an artist to interpret that metaphysical structure in a two-dimensional way. That enraged desire to interpret led me to consult the cartographic theories of Katherine Hanon and Edward Tufte They also mapped a community of theorists, who explored the visualization of information from practices as dissimilar as astrology and gastronomy but shared the intention of reflecting the complexity of the ecosystems explored. 

My desire to interpret, like any desire within the human condition, mutated over the years to map within my emotional cartography, artistic practices that respond to a personal geography. The body of work we see in this room, sponsored by a gallery whose name reflects a unit of measurement, created to identify the geographical presence of architectural structures, renders this curatorial process as a site-specific practice. And it conjures a multisensory and intergenerational tapestry to close this cycle of material exploration. Personal Geography, As a physical space within El Kilometro, it is for me a portal that opens this conversation towards collective imaginaries. The exhibition celebrates the work of eight Latine artists who explore, from painting, sculpture, social practice, installation or botany, the evidence of spaces through superimposed documentation, as an interpretive process of the palimpsest. Weaving between different surfaces and modular reproduction the complex territorial relationship of site-specific and transnational artists. 

Dulcina Abreu

Curator of the exhibition