Taking Baquerizo’s movements as a courier in the city of Utrecht as a starting point, this work appears as a mirror, showing the entangled nature of two very particular contexts and times. 

The first: the 15th century trade between the Spanish and the native inhabitants of the Abya-Yala territories (now The Americas), in particular the trade of  gold for European mirrors, an object the local Abya-Yala population had never seen before. Hidden underneath this economy lies the so-called New World’s desire for possession and its aim to impose a single truth.

The second: IKEA®, one of the most popular European companies today. IKEA® shops mount a “fake jungle” of products, with paths directing bodies as they please in order to gain maximum profit. 

The Spanish “trade” and IKEA®’s act of imposing a deliberate consumer pattern, are connected as both impose a notable structure. The fact that IKEA® Utrecht is located in a street called Columbuslaan (“Columbus lane”), only further heightens the analogy. 

For this work, Baquerizo traveled to IKEA® Utrecht on a quest, asking if it is possible for a South American immigrant, like himself, to explore this other jungle in the same way colonists “explored” Abya-Yala in the 15th century. The act of buying the objects turned the attempt at restaging and reversing this historical event into a failure. 

With Mirroring South (or Golding North), which is built as a fiction, the artist attempts to cast the reflection to current times, where everything seems to be scripted. 

This work was presented in the HKU MA Fine Art Graduation project: SCAFFOLDING SCAFFOLDING curated by Rachael Rakes at BAK basis voor actuele kunst in Utrecht, the Netherlands.