The eighth volume of the Critical Spatial Practice series focuses on Jill Magid’s &lThe BarragánArchives,&r a multiyear project that examines the legacy of Pritzker Prize-winning architectLuisBarragán (1902-1988), and questions forms of power, public access, andcopyright that constructartistic legacy. The archive of Barragán was split in two after his death – the personal archive iskept in his home in Mexico, which is nowa museum and UNESCO World Heritage Site; while hisprofessional archive was purchased in 1995by Rolf Fehlbaum, chairman of the Swiss furniturecompany Vitra, from a New York gallerist. It is said that Fehlbaum bought it as agift for his thenfiancée, Federica Zanco. She is the director of theBarragan Foundation, which also holds rightsto Barragán’s name. For the past twenty years thearchive, housed below the Vitra headquarters,has been inaccessible to the public.
WithThe ProposalMagid attempts to bring together Barragán’s professional and personalarchives by probing the architect’s official and private selves, and theinterests of variousindividuals and governmental and corporate entities who have becomethe archives’ guardians.Magid, with permission of the Barragán family, commissioned a small amount of Barragán’scremated remains to be transformed into a diamond. Thestone, set in a gold ring, was offered toZanco in exchange for thereturn of the professional archive to Mexico. Magid’s artwork directlyengages the intersections of the psychological and thejudicial, national identity and repatriation,international property rights and copyright law, authorship and ownership, the human bodyandthe body of work
Edited by Nikolaus Hirsch, Cari Kuoni Hesse McGraw, Markus MiessenContributions by Leonardo Díaz Borioli, NikolausHirsch, David Kim, Cuauhtémoc Medina, DanielMcClean, Hesse McGraw, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Ines Weizman
