ALBERTO ORTEGA-TREJO

Mexican artist, researcher and architectural designer.

His work uses architecture, drawing, sculpture, writing and video to explore histories of indigeneity in architectural modernity and the production of extreme environments in the Americas. He has been a fellow of the Society of Architectural Historians and a grantee of Jumex Foundation for Contemporary Art, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and DCASE, among others. His work has been shown at DePaul Art Museum, BienalSur, Ca’ Foscari Zattere, Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Uri-Eichen Gallery, SITE Galleries, SpaceP11 and Centro de Arte y Filosofia. He has been a guest speaker for institutions and organizations like MoMA’s Emilio Ambasz Institute x DocTalks, the American Institute of Architects, the Society of Architectural Historians, Smart Museum of Art, Materia Abierta, UPenn, MAS Context and CENTRO.

Lecturer of Architecture History and Studio at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

He manages the Katz Center for Mexican Studies, The University of Chicago.


Upcoming:
Exhibition at Albert Pick Hall, University of Chicago


ARTIFICIAL-AGENCY 


Architecture
Exhibition Strategy
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Previous clients and collaborators include, Art Institute of Chicago, Singapore Art Museum, Edith Farnsworth House,  Goethe-Institut Chicago, Michael Rakowitz Studio, Black Athena Collective, Dawit L. Petros, and  Center for Latin American Studies at The University of Chicago.

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Keep scrolling for selected projects ↆ

Mechanics of Labor Control
On law and religious language
Texts and diagram

This project explores religious and legal language to question and blur the notion of truth, testimony and history. A diagram traces back in time the agents and events that lead to the accidental death of an indigenous worker in a construction site in the 1970’s at the Mezquital Valley, in Mexico. A looping video of repurposed footage shows images of workers of the Valley precariously balancing and sliding down a steel column.



Based on the testimonials collected by Paul Leduc in his documentary Ethnocide: Notes on the Mezquital.

This piece was exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale, in Ca’ Foscari Zattere. “Exploring Belonging”, a collective exhibition by SAIC in response to the US Pavilion theme: Dimensions of Citizenship.