curated by Nina Fiocco and Oscar Formacio Mendoza for Error Proyecto
Italian Cultural Institute, Mexico City

In biology and other sciences, misalignment refers to the inability of humans to adapt to changes driven by rapid evolution. In recent years, the term has been particularly used to refer to the difficulty our bodies face in responding to the pressures imposed by technological advancement and violent climate changes. The works of Laura Pugno in this exhibition reflect on this phenomenon, constructing a series of paradoxical situations that question anthropogenic acceleration processes impacting crops and causing imbalances such as soil dehydration.
Specifically, the artist focuses on monocultures — often created with imported species — which lead to extreme land exploitation, prioritizing current market interests over the sustainability of the local ecosystem. Sugar, a plant introduced to Mexico during the colonial period, is thus explored as a corrosive element of the natural landscape and as an element imposed on dietary and cultural habits. The artist then physically uses sugar to perforate, consume, and erase a series of images taken in territories divided between the reconquest of plants and the resistance of anthropized spaces.

Pugno also reflects on ornamental plants, from their forced cultivation in land exclusively designated for them to their commercial circulation, referenced by the typical crates used in markets. Plants immersed in artificially colored sugary drinks suggest a dystopian imagery and underline the short circuit between the substances that daily nourish our bodies and the bodies' need for care. Finally, the works that open and close the exhibition propose two symbolic ways of reintegrating bodies into their natural condition. In the large-format photograph, the artist's gaze is directed at the reflection of trees in a water mirror; in the video, the movement that water has lost due to drought is replaced by the artist's movement. In both cases, Pugno proposes sensitive exercises to find a new rhythm that seeks to repair the lack of synchronization that the impulse of modernity has imposed on the beings and elements inhabiting the Earth.