“The House and the City” – Tatiana Bilbao

Aug. 15 - Oct. 20, 2019

room filled with leafy and city drawings on white background

This collage explores the home as the basic unit of human space. (Photo by Susan Wides)

The exhibition "The House and the City: Two Collages" will be on display through Oct. 20 in the Fred and Mary Smith Exhibition Gallery in Vol Walker Hall on the University of Arkansas campus.  

A reception will be held at 5 p.m. Sept. 19. The public is invited to attend.

For the exhibition, Tatiana Bilbao created two collages reflective of her everyday workflow at Tatiana Bilbao Estudio, located in Mexico City, Mexico. Susan Wides curated the traveling exhibition.

In "The House and the City: Two Collages," Bilbao's creative routine is projected and translated into the gallery space, re-presenting pin-up walls, models and collages in a vibrant, cross-sectional analysis/diagram of her work.

The first collage will explore projects at the urban scale, analyzing how complex cultural, historical and economic dimensions are activated simply by acknowledging and responding to context.

The second collage will respond to the domestic domain; it will explore the home as the basic unit of human space. The artwork will include custom designed objects and furniture mediating between the collage plane and gallery space.

At Tatiana Bilbao Estudio, collage is an intrinsic part of architectural process. By literally cutting and combining images, collages are a rational process that explore connections between projects and ideas. They are active forms, resonating between realism and abstraction, providing opportunities to reevaluate architectural design methods. Juxtaposed, referential images spur the beholder's imagination, inviting them into a process of co-creation, transforming the perception of their environments.

The studio's collage-centric studio process works in conjunction with traditional forms of architectural representation — orthographic drawings and models — facilitating an interplay between materiality and scale in the formation of spaces.

Admission to the exhibition is free. The exhibition gallery is located on the first floor of Vol Walker Hall, and it is open to the public from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays. The university campus will be closed Sept. 2.