How to Cite: Cireddu, Alessandra, Karen Hinojosa y Zaida Muxí Martínez. "The Art of Observing the Everyday". Dearq no. 41 (2025): 176-188. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18389/dearq41.2025.08
How to Cite: Cireddu, Alessandra, Karen Hinojosa y Zaida Muxí Martínez. "The Art of Observing the Everyday". Dearq no. 41 (2025): 176-188. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18389/dearq41.2025.08
Alessandra Cireddu
Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico
Karen Hinojosa
Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico
Zaida Muxí Martínez
Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico
For the Creation section of this journal, we have chosen to create a dialogue through images and perspectives from two women who are sensitive to what often goes unseen—imperceptible due to their everyday nature, normalized in their invisibility. These are the sustaining activities of life, which become intertwined in the work of Arcelia Barbero and Ximena Ocampo.
For both artists, the city is defined by the people who use it, the people who, through their daily lives, shape it with their actions. In the work of Arcelia Barbero and Ximena Ocampo, the often invisible bodies and activities that inhabit cities, towns, and neighborhoods become present. With their movements, they build streets, squares, and urban spaces. Through the titles of her works, Arcelia focuses on who, while Ximena reveals the what by categorizing her images. Both explore people and activities that usually go unnoticed.
Arcelia Barbero's project, Formas de habitar el paisaje (Ways of Inhabiting the Landscape), is, in her own words, an art that originates from walking:
Formas de habitar el paisaje is a textile project born from the act of walking as a creative process. It is an ethnographic representation of the city and its inhabitants, the trades they perform, and the everyday scenes that animate the streets.
The project documents the atmosphere of the human body through a figurative and distinct aesthetic, bringing visibility to the diversity of people with whom we coexist and who are part of the social fabric of the urban environment. This process helps reconstruct the collective memory of an era.
The project continues to evolve, exploring different contexts, spaces, and social themes.
Regarding Ximena Ocampo's project, [otras] maneras de ocupar el espacio público ([Other] Ways of Occupying Public Space):
[…] it is a catalog of uses, objects, elements, and actions of occupation and appropriation of public space developed by Ximena Ocampo Aguilar. The project offers a detailed account, almost like an inventory of current uses, including unintended, unplanned, or undesigned uses.
It consists of photographs, architectural drawings, videos, and sounds, as well as titles and descriptions, which have been systematized using a faceted, non-hierarchical classification.1
Both projects arise from walking and observing as acts of resistance—acts of care that recognize lives in public spaces in cities that often expel diversity and everyday activities.
1 See for more information: [otras] maneras de ocupar el espacio público, https://otrasmanerasdeocuparelespaciopublico.com/ (accessed September 30, 2024).