Fernan Bilik: Eladio Dieste or a Perceptual Archive

This exhibition and publication contain what I call a fragmented archive, a collection of pictures of drawings and photographs taken with an iPhone with no concern of lightning or framing. This exhibition reevaluates Eladio Dieste's work from a subjective lens, interrogating the objectiveness and biases of a Latin-American archive.

The iPhone pictures accentuate not the drawings or photographs themselves but their quality as objects and artifacts. The wrinkles and folds on the paper take on a new meaning. Who folded them? Who drew them? Who took them? These images tell a more intimate story on the work of Eladio Dieste and unpack distinct layers of the work.

Eladio Dieste can be thought of as one of the most important architectural and engineering figures of 20th century Latin America and one of that shaped what today is the modern southern identity. 

This project contains texts and collaborations by Graciela Silvestri, Julián Palacio, Mauricio Pezo, Sofia von Ellrichshausen, Andrea Simitch, Martín Cobas, Rubén Alcolea, Federico Garcia Lammers, Esteban Dieste, David Costanza, Valerio Paolo Mosco. The exhibition and publication are made possible thanks to the support of the Hunter R. Rawlings III Cornell Presidential Research Scholars organization, the mentorship of Prof. Mark R. Cruvellier, and the support of the architecture department at Cornell AAP along with its many faculty and students. This project would have not been possible if not for the collaboration of the Eladio Dieste foundation, Esteban Dieste, and the Dieste&Montañez studio.

Free copies of the publication will be available at the exhibition.