Mónica Alcázar-Duarte is a Mexican-British photographer and multi-disciplinary artist, whose work acknowledges her indigenous heritage while exploring current ideals of progress. Her work has been exhibited and collected throughout Europe, Mexico and the United States in places such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Autograph Gallery and the V&A Museum in London, the Hasselblad Foundation in Sweden, and Wilhelm Hack Museum in Germany.
LAB PROJECT
THE BRUTALITY OF PROGRESS
By way of decolonial methodologies the work seeks to visualise the brutality of progress through the historical archives of two geographies interconnected by exploitation of local resources and people. The underpinning notion is that of a ‘civilised brutality’ . I want to visualise what Ramon Amaro calls “A pre-condition that conditions our present understanding of extractive activities.”
The project seeks to challenge amalgamated archives of printed images by ascribing languages —visual, mythical, textural— that the archives were not originally intended to contain. I am proposing the overlap of archival imagery with photographs I have taken of the places. One archive covers parts of what was one of the largest rubbish depots in Mexico City. This area, now gentrified, has become the ‘tech entrepreneur’ centre of the city. A square metre is charged over a thousand euros. The other archive contains photographs of the process of destitution and dislocation of indigenous communities during the takeover of Mexico’s northern territories. One of these areas is California, where Silicon Valley exists. The archive is allocated in France. The archives overlap in many instances but an immediate example would refer to flattening as a strategy to hide exploitation.
The archives of these two geographies speak of versions of progress linked to landscaping. One transforming trash into ‘valuable’ tech. The other transforms entire groups of human beings into commodities to be consumed as working resources. The brutality of progress is part of a personal recontextualisation of erasure, land and language. I believe that it is this silenced erasure that continues to enable a disconnect between ecological thought and ecological justice.
