Hello :) I am aaaalf, from Guayaquil - Ecuador.
As an artist, designer, and educator, I intertwine industrial manufacturing techniques and speculative creation to challenge our understanding of how the world is constructed. I come from a family of metalworkers and mechanics; a tradition of making tools that make tools and put together our world. This knowledge and machines were instrumental in making ships, assembly lines, forges and so on; instruments that correspond to and enable our prevailing Western techno-scientific cosmology and voracious modern world system. This tactile knowledge can also be instrumental in the transition towards decolonisation, plurality and kinship, in the words of Colombian-American anthropologist Arturo Escobar, a pluriverse: a world where many worlds fit. Reclaiming this heritage, I craft objects, installations, or public interventions. My approach involves exploring potential futures through collaboration, critical pedagogical experiences and responses to established infrastructures. It is more of a reflective practice than a means to solve practical problems—an open and process-based endeavour.
I locate my practice within the urgency to radically change our modes of production and relation to nature. I delve into the socio-material consequences of manufacturing and design, as well as more-than-human agency. It is crucial to foreground, as much as ancestral wisdom, the knowledge and practices of metalworkers, machinists, and machinery operators while distancing these from market-driven logics. These groups, systematically marginalized, paradoxically play a pivotal role in transforming matter and shaping our world. It motivates me to articulate new and pre-existing languages, trigger discussions about the futures we desire while questioning who is allowed to imagine.
My goal is to foster enduring intimate connections among strangers, disrupting notions of a natural order. I aim to facilitate micropolitical dialogues that intertwine affection, identity, and future expectations, generating responses for artistic production. I aspire to delve deeper into how the metalworking heritage interacts with more traditional art forms, exploring interspecies thinking and the history of art and design in Ecuador. With a focus on symbolic production, I aim to speculate on the untapped potential of ancestral technologies that never got to be.
I am a recipient of the Prince Claus Seed Award 2022 and National Arts Award Nuevo Mariano Aguilera 2024. I hold an MA in Design Expanded Practice from Goldsmiths, University of London. I have been involved in interdisciplinary projects like Making Futures Bauhaus+ by Raumlabor and Universität der Künste Berlin, as well as BBC’s Radio Zero. My work has been exhibited in Tampa, London, Guayaquil, and Berlin.
As an artist, designer, and educator, I intertwine industrial manufacturing techniques and speculative creation to challenge our understanding of how the world is constructed. I come from a family of metalworkers and mechanics; a tradition of making tools that make tools and put together our world. This knowledge and machines were instrumental in making ships, assembly lines, forges and so on; instruments that correspond to and enable our prevailing Western techno-scientific cosmology and voracious modern world system. This tactile knowledge can also be instrumental in the transition towards decolonisation, plurality and kinship, in the words of Colombian-American anthropologist Arturo Escobar, a pluriverse: a world where many worlds fit. Reclaiming this heritage, I craft objects, installations, or public interventions. My approach involves exploring potential futures through collaboration, critical pedagogical experiences and responses to established infrastructures. It is more of a reflective practice than a means to solve practical problems—an open and process-based endeavour.
I locate my practice within the urgency to radically change our modes of production and relation to nature. I delve into the socio-material consequences of manufacturing and design, as well as more-than-human agency. It is crucial to foreground, as much as ancestral wisdom, the knowledge and practices of metalworkers, machinists, and machinery operators while distancing these from market-driven logics. These groups, systematically marginalized, paradoxically play a pivotal role in transforming matter and shaping our world. It motivates me to articulate new and pre-existing languages, trigger discussions about the futures we desire while questioning who is allowed to imagine.
My goal is to foster enduring intimate connections among strangers, disrupting notions of a natural order. I aim to facilitate micropolitical dialogues that intertwine affection, identity, and future expectations, generating responses for artistic production. I aspire to delve deeper into how the metalworking heritage interacts with more traditional art forms, exploring interspecies thinking and the history of art and design in Ecuador. With a focus on symbolic production, I aim to speculate on the untapped potential of ancestral technologies that never got to be.
I am a recipient of the Prince Claus Seed Award 2022 and National Arts Award Nuevo Mariano Aguilera 2024. I hold an MA in Design Expanded Practice from Goldsmiths, University of London. I have been involved in interdisciplinary projects like Making Futures Bauhaus+ by Raumlabor and Universität der Künste Berlin, as well as BBC’s Radio Zero. My work has been exhibited in Tampa, London, Guayaquil, and Berlin.
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Selected Press
Review - Burnaway Magazine (USA)
Review - Bunker Projects (USA)
Interview - Borde Press (ECU)
Profile - Revista Materia (CHL)
Coverage - Ecuavisa (ECU)
Profile - El Universo (ECU)
News - Prince Claus Fund (NL)
Interview - Making Futures (GER)
Profile - Making Futures (GER)
Selected Press
Review - Burnaway Magazine (USA)
Review - Bunker Projects (USA)
Interview - Borde Press (ECU)
Profile - Revista Materia (CHL)
Coverage - Ecuavisa (ECU)
Profile - El Universo (ECU)
News - Prince Claus Fund (NL)
Interview - Making Futures (GER)
Profile - Making Futures (GER)
