Outdoor 2003-2004

Outdoor emerged from my observation of the material assemblages that shaped the homes in my neighborhood—dwellings constructed from disparate elements, each foreign to its original function. This interest led me to explore other areas of Tijuana, where I began photographing the façades of homes built with materials meant for entirely different purposes. This marked my first engagement with the study of these materials, which have since become so embedded in the identity of the city itself.

It was then that I realized how the unequal relationship between Mexico and the United States materializes in the forms that dwellings take in Tijuana, deeply influenced by the social class of those who inhabit them. The arrangement of these materials, layered and transformed, tangibly reveals the processes of adaptation and resistance that emerge in border spaces.