Born in Mexico City in 1974, Alejandro Durán is a multimedia artist now based in Brooklyn, New York. Through photography, installation and video, his work examines the fraught intersections of man and nature, particularly revealing the pervasive impact of consumer culture on the natural world. He received an MA in Teaching from Tufts University in 1999 and an MFA in poetry from the New School for Social Research in 2001. ‘
Washed Up: Transforming a Trashed Landscape is an environmental art project that transforms the international debris washing up on Mexico’s Caribbean coast into aesthetic yet disquieting works.
Since 2010 Duran has collected the international garbage washing ashore in Sian Ka’an, an UNESCO World Heritage site and Mexico’s largest federally protected reserve. So far he has documented products from sixty countries and territories on six continets. He uses this material to create site-specific artworks that heighten awareness of our environmental predicament.
Durán received En Foco’s New Works Award 2011 and Art With Me Tulum’s Social Impact Award 2018. He was included in the 2012 Bronx Biennial of Latin American Art, was nominated for the 2014, 2015 and 2016 Prix Pictet and the 2016 Prix Thun for Art and Ethics. He has exhibited his work at the Galería Octavio Paz at the Mexican consulate in New York and was Hunter College’s Artist-in-Residence for 2014-2015. Internationally, his work has been featured at Fotografie Forum Frankfurt in Germany and the Mt. Rokko International Photography Festival in Japan.
For more information please visit: alejandroduran.com