An Artist Sees What You Missed

Mexico City’s palm trees are dying. Largely brought there in the 1940s and 1950s by politicians eager to emulate the prosperity of LA, they are now being replaced with native plants by other politicians who would rather forget the episode.

Such an ambiguous history is the perfect subject for Julieta Gil. In her hands, the palms transformed into Un Collar Monumental [A Monumental Necklace], a large, aluminum sculpture made of sand casts of the fronds. The piece re-imagines their future state as fossils, reflecting their complex presence in the city as both invader and victim.

Un Collar Monumental [A Monumental Necklace], 2024.

¿Quién mira a quienes miran? [Who watches those who watch?] exhibition, Campeche Gallery, Mexico City, 2024.

Unlike the palms, Gil is a native to CDMX who often explores the space between history, archive, memory, and aesthetics—usually with the city as her muse. “There are many layers to it, and they are always simultaneously visible,” she says. “You can be sitting in a public square that has pyramids from the pre-Hispanic era, and next to those pyramids, a cathedral, and then protests going on regarding the current political situation. It’s this dense layering of history that gives material evidence.”

Her medium, unsurprisingly, is digital, a result of photogrammetric scanning, which allows her to make 3D models of her subjects with an iPhone. That turns a daily walk into a mediation on her surroundings and a way to gather together her subject matter: trees, flower gardens, and public sculptures.

Millefleur [Milflores], 2025.

Digital media also gives her the opportunity to archive, rework, and reflect on historical circumstances—often though not exclusively from a feminist perspective. A simple example is Toy Soldiers, which reimagines bombastic statues of “great men” as tiny, melted dolls rather than imposing monuments.

Toy Soldiers, 2024.

A better known example is her Lumen Prize-winning Nuestra Victoria [Our Victory] which preserved an act of protest graffiti on the Angel of Independence monument. The monument is an iconic object in Mexican culture, one that has been often reinterpreted since its initial conception as a commemoration during the reign of Porfirio Diaz. After he was deposed and the long civil war that followed, Mexico’s new and fragile rulers transformed it into a mausoleum for leading figures of the Independence struggle. Its crowning statue then toppled over during an earthquake in 1957, which rendered it a symbol of perseverance.

Nuestra Victoria [Our Victory], 2019 - 2020.

Patriarchal Sculpture Pack, 2021.

Hombres Ilustres, 2021.

In 2019, it became the focal point of feminist protest, and for the first time, the Angel was defaced with anti-femicide graffiti. This set off a hasty attempt to cover it up by local authorities. Gil swung into action, photogrammetrically preserving its graffiti-state in Nuestra Victoria, which thrust the statue into the future, reimagining a new identity for it: one celebrating the triumph of the protesters’ cause.  

The international success of Nuestra Victoria has been both blessing and curse, as Gil is naturally more contemplative in her art than activist. A recent residency in Portland, Oregon, where she was removed from her Mexican context inspired an unambiguously aesthetic work. Millefleur is a three-panel installation that debuted at Salón ACME in 2025. Based on photographs of flowers, the massive aluminum sheets are suspended by chains, invoking the tradition of Medieval “millefleur” tapestries in a modern digital context. The result is starkly beautiful and rich in reflected history.

Detrás del águila [Behind the eagle], 2024.

Millefleur [Milflores] still, 2025.

Conglomerado [Conglomerate], 2024.

These days, however, Mexico is beckoning again, and new subjects are rising to the fore. Gil has currently returned to the city and is preparing a fascinating dive into incarceration and its impact on, of all things, the city’s park benches. Stay tuned.

“For me, it’s about paying attention to the things that we overlook and trying to find all of the hidden and embedded information and power in that,” she says. “There are always secrets, and once you know them, you won’t want to miss them.”