Movements of light and shadow

In 2021, the 17th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale hosted the Mexican pavilion created by curators Isadora Hastings García, Mauricio Rocha, and Elena Tudela Rivadeneyra with the support of the Federal Ministry of Culture and INBAL under the title “Displacements / Desplazamientos”. It challenged visitors to think about human displacement in terms of social and natural systems, inequality, environmental deterioration, risk of disasters, and violence in an experience of spatial sequences and pauses that explored sensory registers through architectural conditions associated with various kinds of displacement at different scales and in different territories and landscapes.

Artec Studio devised the lighting concept for this exhibition featuring suspended plumb bobs that are displaced by the action of an external force. The play of light and shadows generated by a central source propelled the shadows to reveal the movement of the pendulum and enhance the narrative of displacement. We placed several LED sources with high visual comfort at the lighting point of origin in the center of the space to generate a focus where the shadows would start and be reflected on the floor.