Chapter III
TOCANDO SILENCIOS
en. Touching Silences / de. Schweigen berühren
2025
Newspaper installation with a variable horizontal or vertical format.Pigment print on Newsprint paper. Horizontal format size 360 × 197.5 cm with 80g paper or vertical format size 60 × 1,185 cm with 50g paper.
Hotizontal installation, view of the exhibition Transformaciones de silencios / Transformationen des Schweigens, HGB Gallery Leipzig, 2025. Photo: Lea Petry
Newspaper ¡Pásala!, August 16, 2023, Archivo INAH. Excerpt from the installation Tocando Silencios, 2025.
The work explores the relationship between desire and fear as embedded in the visual language of nota roja, particularly in its projection onto bodies read as female and corpses. Instead of focusing solely on the spectacle of violence, I shift the emphasis toward the human expression through hands, through touches and moments of calling for help, support, being held, or dying. These gestures carry emotional and ethical significance. Through them, I aim to remind viewers that every body, every depicted corpse, belonged to someone, a person with a story, loved ones, and grief that deserves recognition and respect. This work is part of my long-term research on nota roja newspapers, a popular journalistic genre in Mexico. While nota roja shares characteristics with sensationalist and tabloid press, it especially focuses on explicit photo reports of physical violence related to crime, accidents, and natural disasters.
The research was conducted using materials from the archive of the Hemeroteca Nacional de México (HNM), and the work integrates fragments of photographs published in newspapers such as El Gráfico, La Prensa, Metro, Pásala, and Alarma.
Touching Silences, 2025. Detail
Vertical Installation. Touching Silences, 2025. Exhibition view HGB Gallery Leipzig. Photo: Brenda Alamilla
