works
El Rey Blanco
hearth
zines
A cinq cents métres de l’effondrement (2022)
Arriver au port et attendre que la ville s’éveille (2021)
Tout ce qui pend d’un fil (2016)
Pianos en Arabia (2014)
about
contact
works
El Rey Blanco
hearth
zines
A cinq cents métres de l’effondrement (2022)
Arriver au port et attendre que la ville s’éveille (2021)
Tout ce qui pend d’un fil (2016)
Pianos en Arabia (2014)
about
contact
“El Rey Blanco” (The White King) is a documentary project that explores the dynamics of colonialism and extractivism in South America.
Through an approach historical and oneiric, drived by a colonial legend and working with the formalism of a triangle in the landscape (a mountain and a territory delimited by three geographical points), the project draws parallels between two eras of intensive exploitation of natural resources: the exploitation of the Potosi mountain, a silver mine during the Spanish colonial era in south America and the current exploitaition of Lithium in the so called lithium triangle between Bolivia, Chile and Argentina.
The project takes as its starting point the Silver River in Argentina, and leads to the city of Potosí in Bolivia, one of the world's highest urban conglomerations, built at the foot of Cerro Rico (“Rich Mountain”), an immense silver source. During the colonial occupation, this mine, considered the largest source of silver in history, was exploited to the point of exhaustion, financing the expansion of the Spanish Empire for over 250 years.
A 16th-century legend tells of a journey up the Río de la Plata (“Silver River”) to a land ruled by an opulent monarch, the mysterious White King, and of a mountain made entirely of silver. This tale mirrors the myth of El Dorado, a fantasy land of infinite riches that obsessed European settlers and justified centuries of conquest, exploitation and violence. Today, the mountain is believed to be Potosí. As for the White King, he has never been found.
140 km from Potosí lies the northern tip of the Lithium Triangle, an area that stretches between Bolivia, Argentina and Chile and concentrates 65% of the world's reserves of this whitish metal, also known as white gold. A strategic resource for the electric battery industry, lithium is now at the heart of new geopolitical and economic struggles. Like silver in the past, it is fuelling a new Eldorado, a frantic race for resources that perpetuates the same extractivist logic in a different guise.
By retracing the path of the colonists and drawing a parallel between these two triangles - that of silver and that of lithium - El Rey Blanco questions the continuity of the exploitation of natural resources and its human and environmental consequences. Then as now, the unlimited extraction of these riches has led to the destruction of ecosystems, the eradication of indigenous cultures and the displacement of populations to the benefit of economic powers.
Through this search for the missing White King, the project questions the myths of abundance and reveals the other side of the extractivist dream: an endless cycle of plunder and illusion.
“Silver Vein” - sculpture: Rock, silvery metal, 2024
“Open Veins” duo show at PhMuseum Lab (05 Dec 2024 - 23 Jan 2025) along with Sarah Schneider and Stella Meyer, curated by Camilla Marrese and Giuseppe Oliverio. Credits : Rosa Lacavalla - PhMuseum
“The Lithium Triangle worth a Potosi”
5 pure silver coins - 6.67 g each.
Paris, France, 2024 - 1/1
Inspired by one of the coins minted with silver from the Cerro de Potosi in the same city by the Spanish during the occupation of South America, I have recreated 5 coins totally made in silver that keeps in the face the original minted model, with the year of the presumed discovery of the hill by the aboriginal Diego Huallpa in 1545. In the mint, as if echoing that they are the two faces of the same coin, I reproduce the silhouette of the 5 most important Lithium deposits in Latin America, adding their name and the phrase “Vale un Potosi” which in Hispanic voice refers to something that contains an extraordinary wealth. In low relief, each coin is crossed by lines, which when put together, form a triangle, making reference to the fact that, The Lithium Triangle is worth a Potosi.
“Paisaje N°1” - 20 x 25 cm
Lithium-Silver Wet Plate reproduction.
2024
This reproduction, of an intervened territory, is made with the wet collodion technique, in which silver salts and lithium salts (the two main metals of the project) were used to reproduce the image.
Showcased on:
FISHEYE
PhMuseum
Little Stories x Diversion Studio
PhMuseum Lab
Der_Greif x Rencontres d’Arles - Screening “Face to Face” - Rencontres d’Arles, 2024