MAMA
2000
Public art project and video installation with audio
and back-light photographs
Loop: 15’55"” | Variable dimensions
Commissioned by InSite 2000 and done in collaboration with U.S. Federal Immigration and Customs K–9 Officers, these videos reveal the daily work of the officers and their dogs, trained to find drugs and illegal immigrants at the US/Mexican border in San Diego/Tijuana. Setting together man’s two best friends—his dog and his mother—in Mama, Dias & Riedweg take a biting look at the south–north immigration across the world’s busiest border. Definitions of power and authority given by the officers point to possible analogies between military power and motherhood.
Mama investigates how private psychologies affect and constitute public space and vice–versa, whilst the twin video and photos Vicious Rituals portray the scene in which a group of illegal immigrants from south of the border repeatedly jump over the fence separating the US from Mexico to be immediately caught by police.
Installations: La Tallera, Cuernavaca , Mexico, 2014; Americas Society, New York, USA, 2009; Biennale Valencia, Valencia, Spain, 2007; O Mundo Inacabado, Le Plateau, FRAC Paris, France, 2005; Collection Prize at Kunstkredit Basel, Switzerland; Populism, Museum of Contemporary Art Oslo, Norway, 2005; Kiasma, Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finnland, 2004; Macba, Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Barcelona, Espanha, 2003; Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, 2002; Rotterdam Film Festival, Holanda, 2001; Viper, Film Festival Basle and Lucerne, Suíça, 2001; Antagonismos, Macba, Museum of Contemporary Art, Barcelona, Spain, 2003; InSite 2000, San Diego/Tijuana, Border USA/Mexico, 2000
No image belongs to the territory of documentary or fiction. It depends on the literature that will be attached to it. It depends on the perception of the person who’s going to SEE AND use this image.
DiAS & RIEDWEG, INTERVIEW WITH GABRIELA RANGEL, AMERICAS SOCIETY CATALOGUE, NEW YORK, 2009
THE Process
