BIO+CONTACT


Hello!

I am aaaalf and here I am:

Artist, designer, and educator from coastal Ecuador. I intertwine industrial fabrication with speculative creation and critical pedagogy to develop objects, installations, and interventions that question how our world is assembled. My practice grows from a direct relationship with making: I grew up around machines, tools, and industrial processes that, for generations, helped reproduce narratives of industrialisation that have left us with a world in ecological and humanitarian crisis. Progress has an autophagic quality: once a protagonist in Guayaquil’s industrialisation, my family’s workshop closed in 2008, unable to compete with computer-controlled manufacturing and global trade. From this obsolescence, I ask: can its role in the modernisation and industrialisation of the coast be disentangled in order to approach previously unimaginable, yet preferable, futures?

Over the past few years, I have repurposed the machine tools inherited from my father and grandfather. These machines that make machines have become catalysts for questioning modes of production and our relationship with nature. From this process emerged projects such as An Angle Grinder Grinds in the Background (2023), developed with the support of the Prince Claus Seed Award in 2021, and Del acero a convertirse en lodo (2024–2025), recipient of the Premio Nacional de Artes Nuevo Mariano Aguilera. Corazón de la Costa (2026) shifts these questions toward the sea and was presented during GAMA WEEK CDMX with Proyecto N.A.S.A.L.

In parallel, I work on situated socio-material projects. For Galápagos Plastilab (2025), I designed and fabricated recycling machines for public schools across the islands, and through Colectivo Cabos I participate in projects addressing the transformation of marine waste alongside fishing communities. I hold an MA in Design Expanded Practice from Goldsmiths, University of London. I currently direct MOLTN.SPACE and teach at Universidad Casa Grande.

Warmly,
Alfredo Ramírez-Raymond