Diego Morales-Portillo
Structure #36, #37, and #38
2021 acrylic on mdf 60" x 72" Available
Statement
"Proposal for Habitat for Humankind" is a series of architectural proposals that work as explorations of impossible spaces. These proposals act as a metaphor for the postmodern ideal of communal spaces, where humankind could coexist in harmony. The work represents an absurd exercise of presenting a proposal for something impossible to materialize, meant to remain as a concept.
I create non-functional systems and spaces by structuring absurd actions, which are doomed to fail. My work illustrates the absurdism in the dominant white western narrative by challenging and undermining the concept of “Universality” as an ideology imposed upon every “other” culture around world.
As a BIPOC immigrant from the Periphery Global South, my historical position is to produce so you, the westerner, can consume; this defines my multidisciplinary practice in which the act of “making” and “labor” are a way of living. Therefore, my practice is not about the physical product, but the conceptual meaning that supports the absurdist action and its historicist context.
