Iván Ruiz is a researcher at the Aesthetic Research Institute (IIE) in the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM)
, and the author of Docufricción (Docu-friction) : Artistic Practices in a Turbulent Mexico , a book that compiles the work of a group of artists, photographers, documentary makers, and photo-journalists who, through their work, leave testimony of Mexico’s state of violence in the past decades. These artists have also worked on several artistic projects that offer narratives which are detached from the official discourse.
Ruiz has made a staging that follows a line of connections between violence, inequality, and globalization in contemporary Mexico . Although it wasn’t his original intention, he has managed to establish a thematic cartography that documents violence in Sinaloa, Acapulco, Ciudad Juárez, and Tijuana , some of the most violent cities in the country, and the most affected by organized crime in the past decades.
Dead body in the middle of a junk heap - Photo: Fernando Brito
"I was interested in the work of certain photographers who deviated from the official documentary structure. They didn’t want to use realism to shock audiences or promote sensationalism, they were simply documenting what happened in some cities as a consequence of Felipe Calderón ’s plan to fight organized crime. I wouldn’t go as far as to call it a war, because that would imply embracing a Manichean discourse, in which there are heroes in one side, and villains in the other,” Ruiz explains in his interview.
For his book, he chose to analyze the works of Guillermo Arias , the photojournalist; photographer Fernando Brito ; documentary maker Maya Goded ; artist and photographer Adela Golbard ; Mauricio Palos , freelance documentary maker; photojournalist Pedro Pardo ; photographer and contemporary artist, Daniela Rossell ; documentary-maker Alejandra Sánchez , and photographer Yvonne Venegas.
“In a broad sense, Docu-friction designates artistic practices which emanate either directly or indirectly from disputed territories and war zones, where the lines that separate reality and surreality, authenticity and fiction, are somewhat diluted.
Ruiz considers the creation of new narratives in the face of the dominant discourse: “The media, as well as recent works of literature, focus on a dominant narrative , which dictates that the State is weak, while the drug-traffic business and the cartels are strong, that these are good and the others are bad. We wanted to do something different here: show things just the way they are . The book portrays a turbulent Mexico, with vibrant forms of violence. The artists capture the echoes of this vibration to re-elaborate them and deconstruct them to present a different image.”
dm