Pitirre Projects Inc

A Visual Essay on Corruption and Healing

Two recent events have forever marked the lives of Puerto Ricans. One was Hurricane María, which struck the island on September 20, 2017, leaving a humanitarian crisis that will linger for years to come. The other was in July 2019, when more than a million people—almost a third of the island’s population—filled the streets with protests, forcing Governor Ricardo Rosselló to resign. People reached a boiling point when 889 pages of leaked Telegram app messages were published by the Center of Investigative Journalism of Puerto Rico, unveiling a corrupt government whose officials joked about the María deaths and made violent homophobic and sexist remarks against political opponents, journalists, and other public figures. To add salt to our injuries, at the beginning of the current year the south of island experienced a series of earthquakes which left hundreds without a safe home. Based on these ongoing personal and social experiences we seek to produce aesthetic components for a metaphorical visual essay (an installation) reflecting on journalism, disaster capitalism, climate change, and the way in which information is filtered through social media, the distortions created by partisan "fake" news headlines, and how these socio-economic forces affect morality, racial hate, gender relations, cultural production, and personal space.