Permanently Shadowed
Emilia Estrada

Permanently Shadowed is the installation at the center of the gallery space, produced by artist Emilia Estrada and conceived specifically for the exhibition, which also lends its title to the entire show. Composed of two layers — a green nylon grid in the background framed by hand-applied gold leaf, and a large-scale charcoal drawing on washed cotton — the work interlaces two coeval visual genealogies: the subterranean representations of Jerusalem created by Scottish artist William Simpson (1823–1899) during British expeditions in Palestine around 1869, overlaid with a staged illustration of the Moon made by Scottish engineer James Nasmyth and published in his book The Moon: Considered as a Planet, a World, and a Satellite (1874). Both images emerged within the same historical horizon — the second half of the nineteenth century — when imperial expansion, positivist science, and trust in the power of images converged into a single promise of truth: measuring and representing as inseparable acts of knowing and conquering.

Pictures by Roberto Apa