Déjà Visité (NYC)
2023 - Ongoing
Site-specific action, found postcards
Déjà Visité examines the under-recognized histories and legacies of displacement, structural racism, and resistance in New York City. The project consists of an extensive archive of vintage postcards featuring architectural imagery that will be reactivated within art installations and maps. The term "déjà visité" (meaning “already visited”) defines one of the three nuances of déjà vu and refers to geography, spatial dimensions and the sensation that one has already visited a location.
The project sources postcards from auction sites like eBay; which are mailed back to their place of postmark—my home, NYC. A precursor to social media and staple of the visitor economy, these vintage postcards are assembled into an archive, a collection that will construct an urban history of NYC, revealing social issues and power structures deliberately concealed behind idealized imagery.
Revisiting the architecture of immigration at Ellis Island; buildings of companies that profited from slavery; redlined neighborhoods; Robert Moses infrastructure projects used to erase Black and Latiné communities across NYC; and sites of resistance on the Underground Railroad—the project explores the role that postcards, tourism, and heroic images of architecture have played in the advancement of urban renewal while critiquing the present condition.