The work of Mexican artist Edgardo Aragón (born 1985 in Oaxaca,
Mexico) revolves around how power is used to segment a large portion of the population. It often involves stories of organised crime set in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, where the artist was born and still lives today. His videos, made up of beautiful portraits of landscapes, look deceptively calm, but as these portraits unfold, details accumulate, acting as forewarnings and hinting at troubled histories of power, corruption and social exclusion. Aragón's approach to landscape brings to mind “fukeiron”, the “landscape theory” developed in the late 1960s by Japanese filmmakers, who put forward the idea that the landscapes encountered in everyday life, even beautiful postcard-like ones, are an expression of the dominant political powers. In the case of Aragón, the powers represented in his landscapes are drug cartels, political parties and foreign companies, all intertwined with each other in corrupt deals.
