Cannon Bernáldez’s work during her residency at lagos | estudios y residencias unfolded as an opportunity to engage with a space different from her usual studio—one that allowed her to develop and deepen the research behind her photographic pieces, as outlined in her 2024 National System of Creators project.

The residency provided curatorial support, as well as interaction with other artists and the exchange of perspectives with fellow professionals. This dialogue was an essential part of rethinking—and thereby reorganizing—her approach to bodies of work that address violence, explored through three specific processes: the fire at the ABC Daycare Center, the disappearance of journalists in the state of Veracruz, and cases of women attacked with acid.

During the residency month, we were able to analyze her consistent approach to photographic imagery, uncovering a new way to engage with these series—one centered on the idea of Visual Justice. This translated into a strategy structured around a dynamic triad: subject-matter-concept of the image.

Thus, the ABC Daycare series was presented as silver gelatin prints, in which the developing process burned the image itself—resulting in figures shifted toward the spectral, as seen in the image of a toy kitten. For the disappeared journalists, the intervention in the image focused on absence within the landscape, alluding to the journalists’ defense of the land and its preservation as forest, in the face of aggressive real estate speculation. These landscape images were further intervened with thick black paint stains or layered with semi-transparent paper, which obstruct the viewer’s gaze—evoking a kind of veiling. In the case of women burned with acid, the intervention strategy centered on the superimposition of the same photographic portrait of a woman, where the top layer features a burn that pierces the paper.

olgaMargarita dávila
Chief curator