Ausstellungsansicht (© Juliana Vargas Zapata)
"In Defense of Mis Caprichos" is a multimedia exhibition by Juliana Vargas Zapata based on a self-curated archive of 140 found and original images. It engages with the vernacular visual language of Latin America – from memes and personal photos to screenshots. Many of the images exist only in low resolution due to digital circulation, reflecting the visual texture of the internet.
They convey a sensibility that cannot be explained but unfolds through mood, tone, and repetition. Many images originate from or depict contexts of the Global South and serve as an homage to everyday, informal gestures from these regions. Together, they form a visual language that is intimate, layered, unstable, and often humorous.
The project references Hal Foster’s essay “An Archival Impulse,” which frames archiving as an artistic practice that favors fragmentation over coherence – central concepts for this ever-evolving archive. From it, ten artistic objects were developed to capture the archive’s peculiarities: replicas, performances, and hybrid assemblages. Their logic is grounded in appropriation, copying, and transformation – in the spirit of Byung-Chul Han, who views replication as a creative strategy for generating new meanings.