SOYLENT, 2016

Video Installation
6’54”

From November 2 to 30, 2020

SOYLENT is a video installation (consisting of a single-channel vertical video with stereo sound) that alludes to the plant for reprocessing human corpses in the 1973 motion picture Soylent Green. The piece is a reflection on how we relate at the present time to the very notion of truth: our difference to proven facts and the attitudes that render verifiable information irrelevant, in short, what the Serbian-American screenwriter Steve Tesich has dubbed “post-truth.” “Soylent is people!” The most terrifying thing about detective Frank Thorn’s discovery at the end of the movie has less to do perhaps with the implications of collective delusion or even of cannibalism than with their very irrelevance.

Alejandro Palomino (Mexico City, 1986)
Graduated from the National School of Painting, Sculpture, and Printmaking “La Esmeralda” (ENPEG).

He has participated in international exhibitions such as Full Memory (2007, Vienna, Austria), Projections on Lake (2009, Pasadena, California), and ACME Brooklyn (2014, Brooklyn, NY). He was also part of the video program at the Electronic Arts and Video Festival Transitio_MX04, as well as the International Triennial Exhibition of New Media Art at the Beijing Film Academy.

He received an acquisition award at the National Biennial of Emerging Art (2012) and participated in both the IX and X Monterrey FEMSA Biennial, where he received an honorable mention. Additionally, he was a recipient of the FONCA Young Creators Grant (2010) and the Adidas Border Grant (2014).

He took part in residency programs at Cité du Design at the École Supérieure d’Art et Design in Saint-Étienne, France (2013), and at Fundación Casa Wabi in Oaxaca, Mexico (2015).

Since 2013, he has been actively involved in academia, teaching various courses and diploma programs related to Video Art at CENTRO, Design, Film, and Television University in Mexico City, at the Zapopan Museum of Art (MAZ), and at the Academy of Visual Arts (AAVI).

His main influences are shaped by an interest in exploring the multiple connections between cinema and contemporary art. By approaching both personal and social themes and employing syntactic strategies typical of the suspense genre, he seeks to establish connections between the notions of the visible and the hidden, official history and veiled narratives, wakefulness and dreams.

He currently lives, works, and continues to enrich his artistic research in Mexico City.