Temporarily Permanent
Work in progress
This work contains samples taken from thirty documents that marked the rhythm of my movements over a 10 year period through three territories: Venezuela, Peru, and the United States.
Each pattern was vectorized using CAD, isolating fragments of the security graphics that authenticate permits, documents, and visas: the visual DNA of territorial bureaucracy.
Guilloché patterns, geometric grids, and tiny symbols speak of a national identity and point to how each state codifies its authority through complex designs, safeguarding the authenticity of its documents and the legitimacy of those who carry them.
Year: 2025
Materials: Ballpoint pen on paper
Dimensions: 14 cm x 21 cm
Like a naturalist who collects specimens, I have reconstructed the basic module of these graphic patterns—the minimal unit that, through repetition and variation, generates the whole—but stripping them of their security function.
What you hold is a compendium of drawings that follows the order in which the documents containing them were obtained, signs in a cartography of movement.
As I was making this drawings, countless questions arose about the silent architectures in which we live our lives, and how when we can't directly oppose something, we can still maintain a certain dignity through humor, affection, and imagination.
That's why I decided to build the Legitimacy Generator, a tool to help me imagine a system of legitimacy based on uncontainable, unstable categories.