2008 Photographic Residencie

Lourdes Grobet has produced wildly different works since her early career in 1970.Using very diverse media, she constantly renews her photographic practice, thus decrying the lack of flexibility in traditional photography in her country. She creates a new form of iconic Mexican documentarism by photographing ‘environments’ that she feels an affinity for. For her project presented at the musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac as part of the 2008 artist’s residencies, the artist look at the representation of the notion of the east/west crossing between American and Asia. She notably crossed the Bering Strait taking photos and videos and collecting satellite data on this zone.The work resulting from this journey draws on performance and installations and uses videos and photos and questions the notion of borders and migratory flows.

The photographic series entitled East/Westis composed of 72 photos arranged in 36 diptychs. Lourdes Grobet compares images of different places through overlaps and comparisons: Michoacán and the Acropolis, the Diomede Islands and Beijing, Oaxaca and Pingyao. Her work questions the use of the expression “Eurocentric western culture” by showing that westwards of America is Asia. The video Fluxus, designed to be projected onto the floor, shows a split screen of the marine and human flows that characterise this part of the world. The video Frontiers depicts the worrying polar landscape around the Diomede Islands, the invisible border between Siberia and Alaska.

Series produced in 2008.