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"Alejita" 
  Alejita
Cristina Piffer
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Competition Guidelines
Tren Urbano: Río Piedras Station
About the Area
The Tren Urbano is a new star in our urban landscape. With time, we shall become aware of its revolutionary presence, and change our conventional image of the city by gazing at it from the train cars. A different city, at once fantastic and ordinary, will reveal itself to the train's passengers. Moreover, the Tren Urbano is a place, like the communities traversed by it. Passengers will use the train as an entry and exit point into daily life. To those who live in its vicinity it is a claimable landmark. Art proposed for this site must reconcile local character with the overall metropolitan scope of the route. Given the technical uniqueness of each station, proposed works should be limited to the sites specifically identified, which were selected after a thorough analysis of the operation.
Aphorism

Artist: Cristina Piffer
Title: Alejita
Site: Tren Urbano: Río Piedras Station
Dimensions: 2,000 sq. ft.
Materials: Synthetic floor, added "in situ"

A flag unfurled as a list of names.
As a nomenclator that displays the deepest web.
It is not a flag made of names.
It is not a nominal flag.
It is a flag that assigns names.
This one, as all of them, assigns and designates.
But it is always possible to reassign.
By recognizing unknown trails.

Alejita begs to be traveled-over with the body. The scenes of this floor mural by Cristina Piffer gradually unfold as we descend the stairs to the lobby. At that moment the spectator will have a partial view of the mural, without perceiving immediately where it ends. Then he or she shall witness the unfurling of a flag, how it breaks the symmetry of the floor, interlocking with it and with the materials that define the atmosphere of Río Piedras Station, accompanying passengers until their arrival at the train platform.

While walking, the passenger will discover names: the proper names of Río Piedras community residents. White upon white, red on red, in subtle and precise ways. Names that evoke different backgrounds and places of origin; names that speak of cultural crossings.

These names, written over the surface of the mural, honor the dwellers of the place and future passengers. They are identities, tracks. Trails that may be read along the different circulation patterns, entries and exits.
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