22a Bienal de Arte Contemporânea Sesc_Videobrasil, São Paulo, 2023

The diorama features a scale model train accompanied by a small screen simulating the projection of a tiny spotlight positioned in front of a wooden crate. The screen displays an animation featuring a dance performed by poppy flowers. Through this representation, the role of the train as a propaganda tool during the 1930s and 1940s in Mexico is reimagined. At that time, the train carried industrial documentaries produced by the government to showcase the benefits of capitalism in the country. However, in this instance, the diorama highlights a less visible but significant industry within that context: the cultivation of poppies in Mexican territory, promoted by the governments of Mexico and the United States during World War II to produce morphine.

22a Bienal de Arte Contemporânea Sesc_Videobrasil, São Paulo, 2023

The piece is a diorama featuring a turntable as its central element, with various characters depicted in paintings and caricatures from the early 1940s. These characters symbolize industry, progress, and nationalism through angry airplanes, oil snakes, and ventilating robots.

The diorama plays with the interaction of these characters, where an oil pipeline snake holds a caricature of an airplane and a trumpet at its end. Meanwhile, small robots dance on a vinyl record placed in front of a drawing where an airplane is brought down by an oil snake.

This diorama explores a three-dimensional caricature of the oil industry and its relation to war.

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