VISITANTES — paulaabalos.com

VISITANTES / 2021 - 2023
3-channel video installation
Book

Visitantes reflects on the implications of inhabiting a foreign space and the bonds generated there,
and intuitively enters an imaginary determined by presences and faults. (Victoria Ramírez)

Paula immerses herself in the different environments through which she passes, in an endless game of assembly and disassembly, where the furniture is key to the development of the bodies that use it. Thus, in a constant cycle, the order of the temporary dwellings is altered by presences that leave signs of use in their interiors, to later be erased and everything returns to its initial state.
(Victoria Ramírez)

VISITANTES is a project that addresses imagination, inhabitation and the relationship of the body with space. It emerged from photographic and video material from four Airbnb apartments that Ábalos captured for over a year during her cleaning work, where she documented how guests left the rooms when they checked out.
The project focuses on the imagination, when rooms are filled with traces of people who are not present. It approaches the cleaning work as an almost forensic act, where one can deduce who they were and what happened inside by following the traces they left behind.

After compiling a large number of documentary material, Ábalos drew human figures on the photographs, representing the moments she imagined occurred inside the rooms. Then, with the help of her friends, she recreated and filmed these moments in the same apartments.
This project consists on a a book, a video installation of 3 channels, drawings, photographs, light boxes, and an animation.