The series Extracts has its starting point in the observation, in different towns and cities in different countries, of graffiti that engages strongly with its context. In the course of my travels I pay special attention to the kinds of inscription to be seen in different places, and when I find a strong one I decide first to file it away in my memory and then I try to reproduce it formally (as an extract of wall), and thus give it the weight that in my view it entails. Transforming the phrase into volume, giving it dimensions and materiality, is in a way doing it justice and expanding on the idea that the phrase conveys.

I saw the Extract in question in a town called Mompox, which is of sentimental importance for me, and important for the history of the Spanish colonization and the independence of the Americas. The town is on the banks of the Magdalena River, with an air that is warm but fresh and a great tranquillity and enthusiasm. It is a town in which one feels traces of history, ancient and recent… The town is, truth be told, an island in the river, just five metres above sea level. It is fluvial, and always was; it has a lot of fauna, of all kinds, and, well, a nature overflowing with fertility. I saw this inscription on a wall in the town, which is curious because this is a very small town and it is far from common to see graffiti of this kind in a place of this size. In short, it was a day of heat, sweat, a day of corn liquor with ice, a day of grilled fish, and fried plantain, a day of library and museum, of seeking the shade, of a coffee in the nearby park… a day when I tried to trace the clues of a story that I feel to be important, to incorporate it, to digest it, to impregnate myself with the smell of the place more than to know.

Iván Argote