Corredor / Corridor or Passageway

Gelis’ Corredor, which can be translated as corridor or passageway, explores the layers of significance embedded in Latin American landscapes, and the economic, social and political forces hidden beneath their surfaces. Her evocative images trace both natural and artificial boundaries used to define and control populations, deftly documenting the banal and the beautiful, the threatening and the benign.

Through the use of words and images, politics and poetry, Corredor surveys conflicted and conquered places while reflecting on the political implications of the post-colonial landscape. In particular, it investigates various aspects surrounding the Panama Canal, and the control exercised by the United States on the landscape and the psyche of the Panamanian population. Touching on the role of the notorious former School of the Americas in Panama, a US military academy also known as the School for Dictators, as well as describing the strategic use of Paja Canalera, a thorny, prickly and invasive imported plant that was used by the US army to separate the Panama Canal Zone from the rest of the Panamanian population, Gelis’ images encourage the viewer to reflect on borders real, imagined, contested, resented or forgotten and ignored.