Photography, 2010 (Series of 9)
Duratrans and lightboxes, h: 120cm x w: 120cm each

The Circumference of the Cumanán Cactus consitutes a series of nine lightboxes, and was a commission for Manchester Piccadilly Station. The photographs represent natural landscapes that bear little signs of human presence, promoting the archetypal idea of an untouched land in its primal state. Located in an urban area of transit, the work replaces the traditional 'selling dreams' tourism billboard.

The nine scenes depict landscapes, stemming from all around the globe. What at first appear to be traditional photographs, are actually three-dimensional constructions of places, collages created by means of found photographs. Acting as optical illusions, the images sway between the worlds of reality and fiction, nature and culture. This project looks at imageries that have arisen with the very act of 'traveling'. These photographs took as inspiration, drawings and paintings of landscapes, created during different journeys throughout the centuries.

These pictorial accounts of remote exotic places emerged with the age of exploration, a time when Europeans started trawling through the world in the quest of new territories. This tradition has persisted with the 18-19th century's scientific expeditions under Darwin and Humboldt, the European Grand Tour and nowadays' modern tourism.

Images of lush green-covered hills, unsettled seas and fuming volcanoes have circulated, to become part of our collective imagination, inducing the idea of the existence of paradise-like places. The work is concerned with these representations of the 'outside' world, when returned 'home'; the images working as visual descriptions and scientific proofs, but also as exotic memorabilia and objects of myths.