Aesthetic Codes of Interconnected Populations

Inés Vachez Palomar is an urban researcher, writer, and photographer, master in urban typologies from the TU Berlin, and a graduate in architecture from ITESO. She has coordinated and participated in exhibitions and urban interventions in the cities of Guadalajara, Berlin, and Vienna. Her practice explores human relationships with their natural and built environment, and her publications can be found in independent bookstores in several cities in Mexico, the United States, Argentina, and Europe. In 2022 she was awarded a grant by the government of Jalisco for the publication of her first book Arquitectura, remesas y aspiraciones: Microhistoria de la transformación de un pueblo (Architecture and Migration: Microhistory of the transformation of a town).

Leticia Pardo is an artist and architect from Mexico City, currently an Assistant Professor in the J. Irwin Miller Architecture Program at Indiana University, located in Columbus, IN. Her practice operates at the intersection of architecture, research, and art, with a particular focus on themes of placemaking, migration, and political boundaries within the built environment. Her creative work often begins with acts of documentation, unfolding into sculptural and spatial investigations through casting, architectural drawing, photography, printmaking, and other media. Her work has been featured at the São Paulo Architecture Biennial, the Chicago Architecture Biennial, SITE Galleries, Hyde Park Art Center, and the FotoMuseo Cuatro Caminos in Mexico City. Parallel to her studio practice, Pardo has led the design of exhibitions for numerous cultural institutions internationally, including the Art Institute of Chicago; ICA Philadelphia; and Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC) in Mexico City, among others. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the School of Architecture at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), a master’s degree in interior architecture from Pratt Institute and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Karina Caballero is a Mexican architect and curator whose practice operates at the intersection of architecture and cultural production. Her work explores the construction of alternative narratives and the amplification of the “other” within architectural and artistic discourse, creating spaces for critical thinking and collective experimentation. She is the cofounder of Otros Entregables, a platform that fosters dialogues among architects who have expanded beyond the boundaries of the discipline to engage in art and curatorial practice. She served as Curatorial Coordinator at PROYECTOR (Mexico City, 2023–2024), contributing to exhibitions such as Ecologies of the Machine and Copies of Abandonment. At Rozana Montiel Estudio de Arquitectura (Mexico City, 2016–2021), she led communications and research while collaborating on the curation of Blanco en tres actos (Colegio de San Ildefonso, 2021) and Stand Ground (Venice Biennale, 2017). Her work seeks to build bridges between disciplines, shed light on critical issues, and reveal the aesthetic and political power of difference.

Alberto Ortega Trejo is a Mexican artist, curator, and architectural researcher based in Chicago, USA, and Pachuca, Mexico. His work uses architectural history, writing, and video to address representations of indigeneity, the production of extreme environments, and contemporary political struggles in the Americas. He has been a fellow of the Society of Architectural Historians and a grantee of the New Artists Society of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Jumex Foundation for Contemporary Art, and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. His work has been shown in venues such as the Fundación Andreani for BienalSur, Ca’ Foscari Zattere for the 16th Venice Architecture Biennial, Harun Farocki Institut, Chicago Design Museum, Extase, SITE Galleries, SpaceP11, and Centro de Arte y Filosofia.