Artist's Statement

Javier Álvarez

In 2013, I started documenting the lives of 400 people squatting inside a 13-floor former office building, located in Sao Paulo’s downtown. During this process, I became part of the community while I was living there, for periods of 6 to 8 weeks at a time, sometimes 2 or 3 times a year. The full body of work consists of a series of photographs, video interviews and collages. 

On the thirteen floors of the Marconi squat, nearly four hundred people are waiting for a dignified housing solution. Within it, the notion of home (a space of emotional relationships and identity), becomes fleeting because of memories and expectations of a more stable future. Marconi is a place where life stories share common experiences of nostalgia and loss.