Swamp city

Swamp City clearly shows that every landscape carries an inseparable cultural load. The landscape represents a territory, and a territory is, in turn, a representation of those who inhabit it. The landmarks suggested by the artist are perhaps a mirage of

Miami, an iconic city for the Latin community in the United States, arises in the middle of a geography of thick swampy nature, which has been transgressed by humans during the last 80 years, since the beginning of its architectural and commercial boom from of the second decade of the 20th century.

The Swamp City project is divided into three parts: The Swamp, The Resilience, and The City. The Swamp stands out for its representation of the natural state of the Florida area, whose tropical and swampy thickness coexists similarly and harmoniously with urban and suburban neighborhoods. The Resilience, for its part, witnesses how the weight of cement constructions imposes itself as a skyline, subduing nature unquestionably. Finally, The City documents the center of the city of Miami. In this place, commerce, in a state of decline due to the economic crisis of 2008, still maintains absolute supremacy over nature.

The photographic document compiles images of desolate land, garages, factories, warehouses, anonymous constructions, posters, advertisements, and details. The register is clean, geometric, frontal, and objective, relevant to shapes and contrasts. All these “architectural devices” are photographed almost sculpturally, thus discovering a sub-natural landscape devastated by fierce anthropization and excessive growth. Thus, each “sculpture” unveiled in Swamp City becomes a kind of landmark whose presence is now irreversible, reconfiguring a territory from being a landscape to deforming into an anti-landscape of unknown consequences.

Swamp City clearly shows that every landscape carries an inseparable cultural load. The landscape represents a territory, and a territory is, in turn, a representation of those who inhabit it. The landmarks suggested by the artist are perhaps a mirage of the «American Dream.»