El Mundonuevo

Juan de Salas (text) and Asier Rua (photography) present, between image and poetry, the archive of a new world. Strange and familiar at the same time, it is a world that does not yet exist, or that has been around for too long. New construction elements and techniques and changes in taste over the last two centuries have diminished the importance of ornamentation and decoration in architecture. Based on a reflection on the uses and production of ornamentation, building materials, and the shape of our cities, a history of contemporary extractivism since the 19th century is reconstructed, ultimately seeking to escape the dead end in which we find ourselves.


A mundonuevo (or “new world,” “mundinovi,” “tutilimundi,” or “titirimundi”) was a fairground attraction, very popular in the 19th century, in which scenes and landscapes were recreated and figurines were paraded inside a large wooden box using optical instruments, cranks, and mechanisms. There was only one condition for the trick to work: not having been deceived before, and trusting your eyes blindly. Here a city is presented, but perhaps it is a theft. A substitution, a loss, a copy, an apparition, a transfer, a flash, a prosthesis. It is not easy to trust. The important thing is to know where the fairground ends: otherwise, everything could eventually be a trick.

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