Andrés Pachón
Madrid, 1985.
Andrés Pachón investigates colonial imaginaries through photographic archives, contemporary art and visual anthropology.
Artwork in the collection
Tropologías II, 2014
About the artwork
Tropologías II uses anthropometric portraits sent from Paris to Spain’s National Museum of Anthropology in 1900. Facial-recognition software generates a three-dimensional virtual mask from each pair of frontal and profile photographs. By replacing the original faces with synthetic images, Pachón questions the archives’ presumed documentary truth and the visual construction of the other.
Artistic career: Andrés Pachón
Career and projects
Andrés Pachón studied Fine Arts and contemporary art theory at the Complutense University of Madrid, and Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Coimbra. He investigates how photography constructs knowledge and colonial imaginaries, connecting historical archives with present-day computer-vision technologies. He has collaborated with Musée du quai Branly, Spain’s National Museum of Anthropology and MALI. His career includes exhibitions, international art fairs and grants such as the BBVA Foundation’s Leonardo Grant.
Tropologías II received the ninth ARCO-BEEP Award.