"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.
Diego Morales-Portillo (1992) is a multidisciplinary artist and graphic designer originally from Guatemala, living and working in Portland, Oregon.
Morales-Portillo graduated as a bachelor in artistic drawing at the National School of Fine Arts of Guatemala in 2010, in 2015 he received a Bachelor's degree in Graphic Design and Advertising with a Cum Laude degree from the Universidad del Istmo, in 2019 he received the degree of Master's MFA in Visual Studies at Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, OR. Diego has presented his work in Argentina, El Salvador, Guatemala, Italy, North Korea, Spain and the United States in exhibitions such as 2017 Pacific Standard Time LA/LA; Mapping Narratives: New Prints 2021/Winter at the International Print Center in NY (2021); auction and exhibition of Latin American art Juannio 2013, 2016, 2017, 2020. His work is in public collections such as Neo-Murales of the Rozas Botran Foundation and Imago Mundi of Luciano Benneton in Italy and Portable Works collection of the Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC) in Portland, Oregon.
Diego had completed artistic residencies such as Caldera Art residency in Sisters and Leland Iron Works at Oregon City, both in Oregon. Among other awards received by Morales-Portillo worth mention the 2nd place in the 2017 Auction of Latin American Art Juannio the Support Beam grant by RACC in 2020.
