Fellows

The Visitor Economy - Marina Franco

Marina Franco ( Puerto Rico )

The Visitor Economy

My research delves into the effects of tourism on artists and cultural productions, and how cultural characteristics and differences are projected to the outside viewer within the new colonial relationship that the tourism industry embodies. The ideas of paradise and fiscal paradise, and the geographical coincidence of these concepts, also highlight how art plays into the tax haven phenomena, both as investment and as source of inspiration. The manicured tropics of landscape architecture and Instagram feeds that sell real estate, goods, and services to the new foreign investor or tourist, who inevitably hail from the same power centers that first colonized the land, make us wonder who constructs paradise as a concept and who consumes it the most. My time in Berlin will be mostly spent developing an exhibition at ifa galerie Berlin with artists Sofía Gallisá Muriente (Puerto Rico) and Irene de Andrés Vega (Spain).