The instrumental reason associated with the production of landscapes has dominated the environment and reinforced the false dichotomy between culture and nature. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Tieté River—also named Añembý, which means true river in Tupi-Guarani, and known for running through the Brazilian city of São Paulo—was rectified and intervened for economic purposes by the hydroelectric industry, causing environmental degradation that now seems irreparable. The exhibition by artist Federico Pérez Villoro derives from the work carried out during the Pivô Pesquisa residency (2023), and studies forms of dispossession and exploitation that this body of water has suffered.
Pérez Villoro works through journalistic research and image production, revealing information that is normally secured by power structures. The series Río ausente shows technical drawings taken from a document produced by the government of the state of São Paulo in 1982. The diagrams record in detail the manipulation of this site under anthropocentric principles that put it at the service of globalitarianism and urban modernity.
The exhibition's centrepiece tells the story of the river as a machine. The video is constantly reoriented, following the geomorphology of the riverbed, from its source to its mouth. The artist transforms the technologies he works with to obtain results different from those for which they were created. In this case, satellite images, cartographic tools historically used to organize and control spaces, seek to disorient our gaze. The point of reference is not in function of the observer, but rather the geometry of the river that determines the perspective. The Contranubes series also uses satellite views, and contrary to the expected clear images, the technology was modified to identify captures with different opacities. The clouds, which are part of the same ecosystem as the river, function as an atmospheric counter-surveillance mechanism and the edges of the photographs make evident their digital nature.
Small shells, developed in collaboration with artist Ana Rivera and partially made with soil and water from Lake Texcoco, connect the basins on a planetary level and guide us through the exhibition space, showing that the water of the Tieté River is the same as the water in the lakes of the Valley of Mexico. The recognition of the global scale of the hydrosocial system is essential in this exhibition. The geological relationship between both bodies of water is difficult to perceive, however, the artist insists on the relationships between a water network that exists beyond immediate human perception. Like the spiders, protagonists of the main video installation, the presence of three types of mollusks announce the potability of the water while resisting the exploitation of the ancestral water body of Texcoco.
In Aguas verdaderas, Pérez Villoro studies navigation instruments from a philosophy of technology, exploring their possibilities and rebelling against them. His artistic production goes beyond the symbolic or the formal: his practice denounces dominant technologies turning them into disobedient tools for reflection.
Marielsa Castro Vizcarra
This text was written by curator Marielsa Castro Vizcarra for the first iteration of this exhibition at Ayer Ayer, which opened on January 26, 2024 in Guadalajara, Mexico.
