Gentrification is not particular to one city. In the 1970s, Mexico City had one of the highest population growth rates in the world. The demographic explosion, resulted in the need to provide the city's population with education, shelter, healthcare, communication, and transportation services– people requires fundamental infrastructure to survive. The crushing social and political pressure to cover these needs, pushed the government to operate in questionable ways. To meet the demands of housing, the government allowed and encouraged the invasion of lands in what was at that time the periphery of the city. Amauta García's family was part of this invasion. Her parent's hosing project was part of an informal and massive infiltration of large communities in a neighborhood located in the South of the city. Out of necessity for a home, these communities took the lands, and after, they had to fight for their recognition, for their services, and for their rights as owners.

 

Just one generation ago, this was the way in which a family could get a home. Taking as a point of departure this recent and personal history, the following, simple and straight question that the artist proposes is: If my parents had to invade lands to find a home, what does my generation has to do?

 

Today, the average wage in Mexico City is equivalent to 560 dollars a month. For her project Dream of a house, García exposes her research on the housing problems in Mexico, and with it, the anxiety caused by gentrification, credit loans, the appreciation of housing, and the unreachable desire of owning a home. Based on the average salary and a 20-year loan offered according to it, the artist projected in 3D printed sculptures the percentage of the house that she could afford to buy with these conditions in the current real estate market. In other words, she exposes how the project of ownership sits in the realm of desire–in this setting you can only afford a fraction of a house. The sculptures also reveal the process of gentrification. The number of affordable walls increases as you move further away from the center of the city. 

 

Accompanying the sculptures, her video narrates a dream where little by little her house starts to flood. She appropriates animations and renders used by the real-estate market to depict the nightmare. The dream-house become luxuries that can only live in the realm of desire.