Geographies of oblivion

2018, Musa Museum - Guadalajara, Mexico.

Curated By Marisa Caichiolo

Installation variable dimensions. Telescopic sight pica. Mixed media.

Geography of oblivion, a train (the beast) with immigrants on its roof.

Photographic record

© Norton Maza

Glories of humanity to scale. The diorama is usually used to represent triumphal war scenes. In Geographies of Oblivion, however, it is used to show a global shame. The tragedy of forced migration. 

The sound of an approaching train can be heard. It is the “Beast”, the train that connects the south and north of Mexico, and which Central American migrants board clandestinely to seek a better future in the United States. Half a million people board it every year, risking their lives.

The scene is a model, and the train is a toy. But it is a toy whose function is not to amuse a child, but to get adults to take a very real problem seriously. While they think about it, the train, always in motion, keeps going around the track, in an eternal loop that makes it impossible for the stowaways clinging to the roof to jump off the engine.

After the train scene, another chapter appears in the model. The thousands and thousands of Africans trying to reach Europe by sea. The Mediterranean death trap observed from the beachfront by tanned tourists. The next drama in the diorama is that of the fence that repels entries at the Gibraltar border. Last, but in the foreground, a truck presides over a mountain. It is the other access route to North America for Latin American migrants.

The viewer sees these four seasons kneeling, through a telescopic sight. What used to be statistics, figures that no one remembers, the geography of oblivion, is now a black and white safari, the reproduction of the consequences of the lack of solidarity and inequality between the countries of the North and those of the South. Those at the top against those at the bottom.

Text: Juan José Santos