SOFIA DONA
LA PUERTA DE LAS CALIFORNIAS (TIJUANA-SAN DIEGO, 2017)
Three channel video installation
For the project ‘La puerta de las Californias’ a large door of 6,8 meters height was constructed and transported on a truck across the Border from Tijuana to San Diego. The door is a mistranslated object: constructed on the basis of the Mexican metric system, the door results as a 6.8 meters element, instead of the standard 6 feet 8 inches as a regular door would be in the American imperial system. The gigantic door produced by this misinterpretation was brought across the Mexico/US border and went through official customs policies and processes. The process of the crossing was filmed and the documentation is formed in a three channel video installation.
The work, inspired by the different names of Tijuana ‘La esquina de México’ and ‘La puerta de México’, reveals a borderless economy focusing on the way that both the Mexican metric system and the imperial US system are used and combined in the work of architectural and construction companies. This coexistence of both ‘architectural languages’ often leads to misunderstandings and the production of designed objects in the wrong scale.
The documentation has been realized in collaboration with:
Miguel Buenrostro, John Chapman, Marina Viruete, The Universidad de las Californias Internacional (UDCI)- department of Cinematography and the students: Bianca Arvizu, Xcaret Trejo, Pablo Franco, Enrique Castañeda Romero, Pamela Palacios and Karen Catalan
Sofia Dona (Athens, 1981) is an architect and artist based in Munich and Athens. She studied Architecture at the National Technical University of Athens and Public Art at the Bauhaus University of Weimar. She has been realizing projects in the field between architecture and art in various cities around the world, including Athens, Munich, Leipzig, Detroit, Los Angeles, Pisa and the border area of Tijuana and San Diego. She has exhibited in places such as the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens (EMST), the Neue Gesellschaft für Bildene Kunst (nGbk) and the Athens Biennale. She is awarded with the City of Munich 2018 Prize for Architecture and the Fulbright scholarship in 2015. As a member of the group “Errands”, she has participated in exhibitions such as the 7th Sao Paulo Biennial of Architecture (2007) and the 1st Istanbul Design Biennial (2013) and the exhibition Gardentopia in Matera (2019). In September 2019 she will have her solo exhibition ‚Voyageurs’ at the Kunstpavillon of Tiroler Künstler*schaft in Innsbruck.