José De Sancristóbal is an artist, photographer, and wannabe translator. He works with the entanglement of narrative and image-making processes. He uses photography, video, film, and installation to engage with people that dismiss a fixed or bureaucratic identity by assuming a shifting, erratic positionality. The portrayal of these engagements develops at the intersection of two seemingly contradictory conditions of the camera: its purported objectivity and its propensity for deceit. Informed by photography’s history as a tool to regulate citizens and their movement, his work muddles established systems of identification by incorporating inherently unreliable processes. Fiction, memory, translation, and magic realism hinder the devices that pretend to supervise notions of self and belonging, such as passport photographs, migration regulations, identification documents, or national borders.

WIP: Given the right conditions, any sound can pass through a wall
Notes on the translation of El Solitario (or Preface to the English edition)
Trial (the actors and the translator)
Evidence
Untitled translation exercise
Fabrications

 Estudio Cinefotográfica Azteca
Birds dream of singing
Pond
It is an hypothesis that the sun will rise tomorrow
Or untitled
Memorama



José De Sancristóbal is an artist, photographer, and wannabe translator. He works with the entanglement of narrative and image-making processes. He uses photography, video, film, and installation to engage with people that dismiss a fixed or bureaucratic identity by assuming a shifting, erratic positionality. The portrayal of these engagements develops at the intersection of two seemingly contradictory conditions of the camera: its purported objectivity and its propensity for deceit. Informed by photography’s history as a tool to regulate citizens and their movement, his work muddles established systems of identification by incorporating inherently unreliable processes. Fiction, memory, translation, and magic realism hinder the devices that pretend to supervise notions of self and belonging, such as passport photographs, migration regulations, identification documents, or national borders.





WIP: Given the right conditions, any sound
can pass through a wall
Two-channel video installation, 12:40 min.
Wall structure, synchronized 4K video (color, sound)
Variable dimensions.



Notes on the translation of El Solitario
(or Preface to the English Edition)
Two-channel video, 28:08 min.
4K video and Super 8mm film transferred 
to digital (color, sound).



Trial (the actors and the translator)
4K video, blackout structure, translation drafts, 
light table, 4x5 film negatives, inkjet prints.
Three actors audition for the role of “José,” the 
semi-fictional protagonist of El Solitario, a novel in process of translation (later addressed at length in 
Notes on the translation...)
Overall variable dimensions.


Evidence
Framed inkjet prints, 21 x 21 in each.
Installed at corresponding positions on 
two sides of the same wall.



Untitled translation exercise
1. Letters written by my father superimposed
with their English translation, placed on a window
(16 inkjet prints in 8 letter-sized clip frames)
2. Framed inkjet print (18 x 24 in)



Fabrications
Inkjet prints, ink drawings, wood, metal, glass,
fishing line, caster wheels.
A recreation of a camera as remembered 
by one of its owners 40 years after using it.
Overall variable dimensions.



Estudio Cinefotográfica Azteca I-IV
Framed photographic cut-outs from the archives
of Estudio Cinefotográfica Azteca, a former family-run photo studio in Tapachula, Mexico.
15 x 20 in each.



Birds dream of singing
A series of concerts performed  by musicians 
sleeping together. 
Comissioned by Festival Santa Lucía, Monterrey.
Platform designed and built by Estudio Núñez-Zapata.



Pond
Photographs of a house’s floors, metal tray, water,
found lattices and cauldron.
Made in-situ for artist-run space Biquini Wax, 
Mexico City.



It is an hypothesis that the sun will rise tomorrow
Mirror, paint, wood structure, sunlight, framed
and unframed inkjet prints.
Overall dimensions variable.



Or untitled
Monologue (approx. 30 min), benches, photograph, plinth, modified light switches.
Performed during the transition from light to dark.



Memorama
HD video, loop, 9:23 min