IN'VISIBLE'
La RInconada Gold Mine, 5200m Perù. November 2024.
Gold. Earth bears the unfathomable weight of human desires. Its shimmering allure has obsessed imperial modernity since the killing of Inca Atahualpa, usurping the Inca’s sacred golden power.
During my 18+ months investigating the Anthropocene in South America mining territories I reach La Rinconada, the world’s highest human settlement, amongst the harshest I encountered.
The Peruvian Andes stand on the glacial Frontlines of Ambition—their Meltwater Strings draining into mining arteries. In a Systemic Entanglement, capital entwines with Nature’s commodification, labour exploitation, and human sacrifices, carving the inhuman into Earth’s body.
From aerial views Mercury Veins bleed into Earth’s meridians, while on ground Pallaqueras women sift through gendered debris. Gold’s scarcity drives its worth—stored in vaults (21%), traded to hedge markets (23%), and adorning bodies (49%).
As glacial waters dissolve into a toxic constellations of pools on the Andean foothills, I ask: if Gold is modern wealth’s foundation, why do a few grams extract the inhuman from humans? Will we ever question its ‘value’?

Glacial Orb.
The unyielding cycles of human ambition carved into fleeting silence.

Meltwater Strings.
The disjointed exploitation of glacial bodies draining into crude mining arteries.
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- Pallaqueras’ Residual Hands.
- The gendered labor sifting through debris of precarity.

The Edge of Modernity.
The shimmering precipice between ambition and the endurance of survival.
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Grams, of a Golden Mirage. The weightless lure that engraves the inhuman onto earth’s body.

Mercury Veins.
Toxic landforms of anthropogenic amalgams leaching into Earths’s meridians.

The Horizons of the Anthropocene.
Poisoned constellations of mercury-cyanide craters in once-sacred territories.
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