A collaborative project by Javier Tapia and LA-based artist Camilo Ontiveros, Travelling Dust unveils and rearticulates assumptions about cultural trade, geography, nature, and the people of three communities of the Americas: Chile, Mexico, and Los Angeles.

Concerned particularly with the economic and cultural trade between Latin America and the United States, Tapia and Ontiveros investigate labor, informal economies, and migration from a multifaceted perspective, exploring themes of cultural adaptation, homeland, displacement, diaspora, borders, and minority status that speak directly to Los Angeles and its communities as paradigmatic site of exchange. Travelling Dust uncovers alternative and hidden histories for the contemporary moment via film and installation by excavating differences and forging connections between Los Angeles and Latin America.

The project brings the discrete places of Chile, Mexico, and Los Angeles into conversation through the display of collected objects from those places. Staged in the form of installation, the objects are exhibited on a custom-made sculptural platform, recreating a museum display. Considering questions of authenticity and origin, the installation includes original and archeological objects provided by pivotal collaborator, the San Gabriel’s Mission Museum in East Los Angeles.