What We Want To Remember

Visual Mapping through Memory and Nostalgia. How does collective memory shape our relationship to aesthetics and sense of place? How does history present itself in our cityscape? What role does iconography play in the public spaces we share?

After the fall of Tenochtitlán, the Spanish chose Coyoacán as their place of settlement, to begin their plan for “New Spain”. Hernan Cortés was officially named “marqués del Valle de Oaxaca” by the Spanish crown in 1529. As a reward for his success defeating the Mexicas and Moctezuma he was given a large territory for personal use which included Coyoacán. The first officially recognized catholic mass which Cortés attended with his wife Malintzin was held in the Chapel of the Immaculate Conception in this same neighborhood. One of the oldest settlements known to Spanish colonial rule Coyoacán would serve as the spearhead for the conquest of the rest of Latin America.

Documenting the aesthetics of Coyoacán in Mexico City through the lens of anthropology: focusing on objects, structures, public space, graffiti and cultural ephemera. Mapping the observed patterns and visual queues of the cityscape, specifically in terms of community and neighborhood life. Using collective memory gathered through conversations and informal interviews, as well as historical documents from the archive. Contrasting actual events by composing images related to myth, religion, and iconography as means to highlight the effects of time on the sense of place. What We Want to Remember questions our relationship to history and aesthetics in the Latin American cityscape.

The images themselves are part fact, part fiction, and read as visual memories. At times blurry and abstract, like frozen moments formed out of the longing for what is and what might have been. Other times they present as nostalgia; snapshots of how we could choose to remember others and ourselves without self consciousness or outward intentions. Reconstructing memory through the physical intervention of photographs by cutting, coloring and pasting. These different approaches to image making aim to find connections between past and present, while reimagining our collective experiences.