Miguel Fernández de Castro: Grammar of Gates

Category: Artists' Film International — Published: 14 Apr 2020

Artists’ Film International is a collaborative project featuring film, video and animation from around the world. While the Gallery remains closed, selected works responding to the theme of language will come to you.

Miguel Fernandez De Castro, Grammar of Gates / Gramática de las puertas (Trailer), 2019, Single channel video with sound, 20:31. Selected by Ballroom Marfa, TX.

In Grammar of Gates / Gramática de las puertas (2019), Miguel Fernández de Castro (b. 1986, Mexico) explores the overlapping territories, languages and conflicts that mark the desert border between Mexico and the US which occupies the ancestral lands of the Tohono O’odham Nation, an indigenous people living on the Sonora-Arizona borderlands.

The artist weaves together excerpts from the film Geronimo Jones (1970) with drone and surveillance-like imagery of the landscape, drug smuggling routes and an affectless recitation of phrases taken from A Practical Spanish Grammar for Border Patrol Officers, the language of power that defines and controls the border gates.

Miguel Fernandez De Castro, Still from Grammar of Gates / Gramática de las puertas, 2019, Single channel video with sound, 20:31. Selected by Ballroom Marfa, TX.

Miguel Fernández de Castro has developed a body of work in photography, video, sculpture, archives and writing. His work has been shown at Frac Centre-Val de Loire, Orleans; e-flux, New York; Museo de Geología, UNAM, Mexico City; Spazio Veda, Florence; The Wren Library, Cambridge; Museo Artium, Vitoria; Proyecto Paralelo, Mexico City; Casa del Lago, Mexico City; Ashkal Alwan, Beirut; Museo de Arte Moderno de México, Mexico City; Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver; Bikini Wax, Mexico City; Museum of Latin American Art, Los Angeles; among others. Recently, he has been resident at PAOS, Guadalajara, and at Casa Gallina-InSite, Mexico City.

Ballroom Marfa in Marfa, Texas, is an independent contemporary cultural arts space which supports emerging and established artists working in the visual arts, film, music and performance and in particular, on projects that would be impossible to stage in traditional gallery or museum settings.

Miguel Fernandez De Castro, Still from Grammar of Gates / Gramática de las puertas, 2019, Single channel video with sound, 20:31. Selected by Ballroom Marfa, TX.

Artists’ Film International (AFI) is a partnership of 20 international organisations that celebrates moving image. Partners are: Ballroom Marfa, Marfa, Texas, USA; Belgrade Cultural Centre, Belgrade, Serbia; Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden; CAC, Vilnius, Lithuania; Centre for Contemporary Arts Afghanistan (CCAA), Kabul, Afghanistan; Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, Ireland; Fundación PROA, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Galleria D’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Bergamo, Italy; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, USA; Istanbul Modern, Istanbul, Turkey; Friends of Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa; KWM artcentre, Beijing, China; Mohammad and Mahera Abu Ghazaleh Foundation, Amman, Jordan; Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Moscow, Russia; Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland; Video-Forum of Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.), Berlin, German; Para Site, Hong Kong; Project 88, Mumbai, India; Tromsø Kunstforening, Tromsø, Norway; Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK.