Mimesis, 2019
Ortiga, Quito, Ecuador

Mimesis

Mimesis explores an Ecuadorian visual narrative examining the relationship between the natural world and the human body.

Ecuador's constitutional framework recognizes that nature has rights in its own capacity. This means that a river does not need to demonstrate that its destruction directly harms a human being before its rights can be invoked. Its ecological existence and integrity are themselves constitutionally protected.

Drawing on Erich Auerbach's understanding of mimesis as the historically situated representation of reality, the project considers how our perception of the world is shaped by cultural, historical, and material conditions. Photographed across the Amazon Rainforest, the Chocó Andino Cloud Forest, the Pichincha and Ilaló volcanoes, and the Pacific Ocean, the series questions the representation of boundaries between human and non-human nature, proposing that humanity is not merely part of nature, but nature itself.

The body becomes a landscape: a site of memory, resistance, and transformation, shaped by the same forces that shape the earth. In Ecuador, a territory defined by extraordinary biodiversity yet marked by ongoing environmental degradation, this relationship becomes both intimate and political.

There is no single meaning or representation, but rather the merging of images that leave the viewer to assemble meaning or to simply feel through the affect created by the dialoguing bodies.