Alejandra Laviada lives and works in Mexico City. Her work explores photography’s shifting role and relationship to other artistic media, such as painting and sculpture. The images emerge from the intersections between these different mediums, and aim to question and redefine photography’s various roles within contemporary art. I think one is able to tell this artistic background when seeing her images. I selected her work because I am very interested in the way she intervenes spaces creating sculptural installations and photographs them after, questioning the limits of photography as a medium.

Alejandra completed her BFA in Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design and subsequently received an MFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York. She is a member of the photography collective POC (www.pocproject.com). In 2010, Alejandra won the Photography Biennial in Mexico City, and in 2009 was awarded Photo España’s Descubrimientos Prize for her Photo Sculpture series. She is recipient of FONCA Young Creators grant for 2012-13. Her work has been exhibited widely, and has been shown in various photography festivals including: Hyeres, The New York Photo Festival, Photo España, and Guatephoto among others.

Re-Constructions

“Re-Constructions” makes reference to the process of constructing something new from discarded or recycled materials, a practice often used in architecture.

The images in Re-Constructions explore photography’s role and relationship to sculpture and to the history of the readymade. They are a modern reassessment of Duchamp’s legacy and of the long and evolving dialogue between sculpture and photography.

Throughout my work and practice, I’m very interested in exploring photography’s role and relationship to other artistic media, and to create images that lie at the intersections between different creative disciplines. I approach my photographic process as a painter and sculptor, looking for ways of constructing an image on my photographic canvas.

For this body of work, I gathered discarded material from the Hotel Bamer, which was a landmark of Mexico City in the 1950’s and is now in the process of being redeveloped. I used the materials I found to create a series of ephemeral sculptures off-site.

I’m very interested in the cycles of decay and rebirth that characterize Mexico City, and how these cycles manifest themselves onto the objects and spaces I photograph. My process is a sort of urban archeology of these abandoned sites, and makes reference to the delicate notion of entropy and temporality of it all. The tension between construction and destruction is often present in my work, not only through the ephemeral sculptures I create, but also through the transient spaces I choose to photograph.