2025
Materials: paper, pen, tape

rozanamontiel.com

Mexican architect Rozana Montiel is known for her socially conscious approach to design, and in Berlin, she presents Collective Correspondence, a new, participatory installation dedicated to imagining collective stories across borders.

Visitors are invited to intervene directly on printed literary fragments with spatial connotations by underlining, crossing out, or drawing, and then place their marked pages within the space as they see fit. Texts are drawn from works by authors with connections to both Germany and Mexico that explore issues of identity, memory, displacement, and beyond, and are printed in English, Spanish, and German. The intervened pages will be exhibited in both Mexico City and Berlin, inviting participants across the globe to collaborate not only on a shared environment but also on a multifaceted narrative of our collective present. Together, we’ll consider how we might build on the past together, in order to envision new paths forward.

Texts include excerpts from Alexander von Humboldt’s Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain,published in 1811; Anna Seghers’ Transit, published in 1944; Fabio Morábito’s También Berlin Se Olvida(Berlin Forgets Too), published in 2004; Juan Villoro’s essay Iguanas y Dinosaurios, Berlín, Capital del Fin del Mundo (Iguanas and Dinosaurs, Berlin, Capital of the End of the World), published in 1999 and the play La Guerra Fría (The Cold War), published in 2023; as well as texts from emerging talent Alonso Burgos’s forthcoming, 2026 debut novel Satellite, to be published by Alfaguara.