In this workshop students will use the colorful international trash that Durán has found washed up on the caribbean coast of Mexico to create installations on the Vassar campus. We will explore forms that speak to the relationship between the synthetic and the natural at both the micro and macro level and produce photographs of these ephemeral works.

In preparation for the workshop students will be asked to scout locations for the installations and take photographs of one micro and one macro location.

There will be a maximum of 20 students who may take the workshop. To sign up, please email thpacio@vassar.edu.

Alejandro Durán was born in Mexico City in 1974, Alejandro Durán is a multimedia artist now based in Brooklyn, New York. Through photography, installation and video, his work examines the fraught intersections of man and nature, particularly revealing the pervasive impact of consumer culture on the natural world. He received an MA in Teaching from Tufts University in 1999 and an MFA in poetry from the New School for Social Research in 2001.

Durán received En Foco’s 2011 New Works Award, was included in the 2012 Bronx Biennial of Latin American Art, and was nominated for the 2014 and 2015 Prix Pictet and the 2016 Prix Thun for Art and Ethics. He has exhibited his work at the Galería Octavio Paz at the Mexican consulate in New York and was Hunter College’s Artist-in-Residence for 2014-2015 with his solo show, Washed Up: Transforming a Trashed Landscape.