University of Arizona
College of Fine Arts - School of Art

School of Art Galleries

Untitled B1

San Francisco, CA. Castro District

Medium: Photograph
Date: 2019

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.