AV artist who since 1992 has given over all his time to cinema and video research. His creative process has essentially developed in the global South, both geographically and conceptually, particularly in Oaxaca, Chiapas, Yucatán, Guerrero, Bolivia and Ecuador. He studied social communication at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana in Xochimilco but is self-taught when it comes to AV mysteries. Varela’s work has been shown and recognized in numerous forums, exhibitions and film festivals, in and out of Mexico, such as the X Bienal de La Habana; the Centro de Arte Reina Sofía; TIFF Cinematheque in Ontario; the Festival Internacional de Cine in Morelia; the Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen; Frieze Projects/Lux in London; the Getty Research Institute and the Guggenheim Museum, among others. In 2019, he became a Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte en México member and was named the Rockefeller Foundation’s media artist in 2006. His latest feature film, 2022’s El Prototipo, won a Puma de Plata award for best Mexican film at the 2023 Festival Internacional de Cine UNAM.    

Trans apariencia estéreo voodoo, 2024
7 min.

At what point did everything become a camera, screen, microphone, resonator, or amplifier? Where do the devices for capturing the world end and other instruments of perception begin? This choral story comprises files from a non-human dream of medial action and audiovisual recording tools randomly modified with beaks, claws, tentacles, pincers, and maws. These furtive explorations, recovered from other tangible worlds, invite us to imagine, from a visual perspective, a place that escapes the pretension of control and domination.