Mexican artist and architectural researcher based in Chicago, USA and Pachuca, Mexico.
His work uses architectural history, writing and video to address representations of indigeneity, the production of extreme environments and contemporary political struggles in the Americas. He has been a fellow of the Society of Architectural Historians and a grantee of the New Artists Society of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Jumex Foundation for Contemporary Art and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. His work has been shown in venues as Fundación Andreani for BienalSur, Ca’ Foscari Zattere for the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale, Harun Farocki Institut, Chicago Design Museum, Extase, SITE Galleries, SpaceP11 and Centro de Arte y Filosofia.
He is currently the curator of The Last of Animal Builders, an exhibition at the Edith Farnsworth House, opening April 2, 2023. He manages the Katz Center for Mexican Studies at The University of Chicago.
Work by Alberto Ortega at Rhona Hoffman Gallery in Chicago.
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Department of Bi-National Affairs
On Nationalism
At Infernal Court - Extase Chicago
Department of Bi-National Affairs happens as an unexpected response to Ortega’s participation in the open call for Border Wall Designs requested by the Department of Homeland Security. Ortega was a member of MADE Collective, the team that proposed to create a new country called Otra Nation, shared by Mexico and the USA. The video presents a rant recorded by a videoblogger from Texas that believed that the proposal was actually due to happen and would subsequently dismantle the border. While reading the proposal in its entirety and choking back anger, the woman asks for Donald Trump’s help in “stopping this madness.” In an attempt to engage in a conversation with a delusional far right reality, Ortega sent a letter to this person pretending to be the new director of Bi-National Affairs for this new nation. There was no response to the letter and the video was removed from the platform afterwards.
-From Press Release for Infernal Court.
For Infernal Court, at Extase Chicago, Ortega repurposed and edited the content of her response into a series of slogans shown on a TV. The font used for the slogans is Joanna Nova, a typeface designed by Eric Gill, known sexual predator and pedophile. Joanna Nova is used for the official branding of the Department of Homeland Security of the USA.
This project is a parallel outcome from the Otra Nation proposal that MADE Collective (from which I was part of) formally submited to the Open Call for designing the US-Mex Border wall asked by the Trump Aministration. Our team proposed the creation of a new country between Mexico and the US, a sort of Utopian Chicano country called Otra Nation that would join both countries as a borderless buffer zone connected by a bi-national Hyperloop.
-From Press Release for Infernal Court.
For Infernal Court, at Extase Chicago, Ortega repurposed and edited the content of her response into a series of slogans shown on a TV. The font used for the slogans is Joanna Nova, a typeface designed by Eric Gill, known sexual predator and pedophile. Joanna Nova is used for the official branding of the Department of Homeland Security of the USA.
This project is a parallel outcome from the Otra Nation proposal that MADE Collective (from which I was part of) formally submited to the Open Call for designing the US-Mex Border wall asked by the Trump Aministration. Our team proposed the creation of a new country between Mexico and the US, a sort of Utopian Chicano country called Otra Nation that would join both countries as a borderless buffer zone connected by a bi-national Hyperloop.