Medium: Photograph
Date: 2019

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Mariel Miranda

Statement:
For this exhibition I have compiled the evidence of my counter-cartographic response to the 1947 road trip that Simone De Beauvoir took through the American Southwest. Using her book “America Day by Day” as a map, I traveled 4200 km by car through the spaces that she visited, familiarizing myself with parts of California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. I worked with photography, writing, video, public intervention, and performance as methods of processing my journey. 

This journey allowed for a political dialogue to grow between me–a mexican fronteriza artist–-and De Beauvoir, 73 years after her original road trip. Contemporary notions of territory, citizenship and landscape are explored in our dialogical fiction as I experienced the journey in situ, against the grain, and from a decolonial perspective.