In this text the essayist Adriana Valdés discusses the work of Alicia Villarreal, who has created a game based on the alphabet that uses images of discarded objects as vowels to be read as a text. Based on the Walter Benjamin quote (the search for meaning and the purpose of great stories), Valdés considers this combination of detritus and language to be one of the world’s destroyed texts. Faced with a loss of certainty and ties or bonds, the work offers the chance to reconstruct meaning and measure the void with the fragmentary remains. The author also suggests that the limited number of silent elements (five “vowels”) available to form phrases in an unknown language determines the number of possible combinations.

This text appeared in the catalogue for Fuera de caja (Outside the Box), the exhibition of works by Alicia Villarreal at the Galería Gabriela Mistral (May 31 to June 30, 1994). The catalogue included texts by Adriana Valdés and Guillermo Machuca. The text by Valdés was originally published in the folder Vocales (Vowels), which was produced on the occasion of Fragmentos Di-versos (Di-verse Fragments), the exhibition of works by the same artist at the MAC (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo), in April 1993. The two exhibitions were the second and first stages, respectively, of a similar project that was based on the creation of a visual alphabet.

The exhibition Fuera de Caja consisted of a series of installations featuring photographs and photocopies of objects collected by Alicia Villarreal that formed a sort of visual grammar based on an abstract alphabet made up of twenty-seven images that had been exhibited on a previous occasion at the MAC. All the mounted objects were stored in boxes and suitcases that could be used to transport the exhibition and were used in some of the installations.

[For another analysis of language and fragments concerning the work of Alicia Villarreal, see in the ICAA Digital Archive the essay by Alberto Madrid Historias de recolección (745864)].