Del reino de lo invisible | Paloma Villalobos

Del reino de lo invisible (Of the realm of the invisible) is an artist’s book by Paloma Villalobos in which the author reflects on the uncertainty provoked by the pandemic, from the compilation and assemblage of fragments of whatsapp chats received during the first weeks of quarantine and confinement in March of 2020.

The procedure of writing was developed from the selection of short phrases, in their majority emotional and highly interpretable, that the artist’s friends and relatives sent in those first days of perplexity. These ephemeral and virtual textualities were fixed with a process that is as analog and obsolete as the use of transferable letters (letraset) over paper. This sequence of phrases rewritten by hand, letter by letter, configures a choral poem, intimate and uncertain, which at times is interrupted by images captured in that same period that remind us of the momentary paralysis of human activity: decontaminated skies, vegetation sprouting spontaneously through cement, screens and collective actions of false hope.

The book suggests that from the “reign of the invisible” emanate certain threats that we will never observe. It is a reign that governs our lives without us being able to see it, touch it, nor control it and that, suddenly, fractures the course of “normality.” From this reign certain natural phenomena arise like earth tremors and certain pathogen agents like the virus.

The edition possesses a print run of 20 copies produced entirely in the workshop of Naranja Publicaciones and contains distinct forms of interventions handmade by the artist with letraset in each copy.

This book is part of the investigation “Un mundo sin nosotr_s: relatos y visualidades en tiempos virulentos” (“A world without us: stories and visualities in virulent times”) Fondecyt n° 3210188.