Pieces of Space

The Mexican artist Julieta Gil questions who national heritage is really for, how it is constructed, and why the past continues to be memorialised today. Through her work, she looks at public space in its many forms, from streets and monuments to digital and archival spaces. For this project, Gil used photogrammetry – a scanning process that stitches together still photographs to create a three-dimensional model – to document historical sites and monuments in her hometown of Mexico City. She chose places where imposed versions of history are disrupted by shared acts of remembering, highlighting the tension between the polished symbolism of public monuments and the violence embedded in their pasts. The material agility of these scans reflects how Gil uses technology as a tool for critical enquiry. Presented as video pieces, photographs and digital 3D models, they also challenge traditional ideas of objects and displays, particularly within museum settings.