Bubble Gum Stuck on My Shoe by Carolina Pimenta

Bubble Gum Stuck on My Shoe captures a side of Mexico that emerges in the streets: a landscape of spontaneous and temporary inventions, evidence of everyday cleverness, fleeting signs of how urban spaces are constantly being adapted to people's needs.

Carolina Pimenta is a Portuguese photographer who lives and works between Lisbon and Mexico City.
Her practice, which weaves together photography, collage and installation, portrays everyday life with wit and a critical gaze, exploring the relationships between media culture and the boundaries of public and private space.

Her work reveals a face of Mexico that emerges directly from the streets: a landscape of stacked chairs, patched walls and improvised solutions which, taken together, become evidence of everyday ingenuity—ephemeral signs of how urban spaces are constantly reshaped to meet people’s needs.

Bubble Gum Stuck on My Shoe grew out of this attentive observation and from a collection of images that isolate seemingly marginal details and inventions, capturing their spontaneous and transitory nature.

The project was initially conceived as an urban installation during ZONA MACO, with posters displayed in the neighborhoods of Juárez, Condesa, Roma and Polanco. Its sudden interruption, however, exposed the fragility of projects that rely on promoters and sponsors.

Removed from the physical context for which it was conceived, the work first found new life in the digital sphere, circulating across the web and social media. Today, it takes on the form of a book.

The three-color Risograph printing, produced by Atelier Tatanka with a new halftone and color separation process, preserves the unexpected, spontaneous and urban character of the original project.

This volume gathers and documents all the transformations the project has undergone—from chance encounters on the streets, to its digital appearances, and finally to these printed pages. Above all, it testifies to the ability of ideas to adapt, transform and find new spaces, even when the original path seems to vanish.