BUBBLE GUM STUCK ON MY SHOE

Public Art project during Zona Maco 2025

What happens when a project meant to exist in the streets is left without a street to inhabit?

Bubble Gum Stuck on My Shoe began as an exploration of Mexico City’s makeshift solutions—those fleeting, improvised interventions that blur the line between necessity and creativity. I spent months photographing and documenting these ephemeral moments, pitching the project to multiple sponsors, securing funding, and setting everything in motion. Then, as often happens, the support vanished just a week before execution. The project, once tangible and imminent, was suddenly suspended—caught in a limbo of dependence on collectors, brands, and sponsors. A system where an idea can be fully realized one day and completely unmade the next.

Then I remembered: in Mexico, there’s no such thing as a problem, only a solution. If the city itself thrives on adaptation, why shouldn’t this project? If it couldn’t materialize in the streets, then it would have to exist somewhere else.

So Bubble Gum Stuck on My Shoe is no longer a physical installation—it has mutated, re-emerged, and found its own alternative route. It will live in a digital space, a reflection of the very makeshift ingenuity it set out to document. The lesson wasn’t just in the images, but in the process itself: improvisation, reinvention, and the ability to keep going, even when the path is suddenly rewritten.

Because in the end, the city finds a way. So does the work.

In the visual landscape of Mexico City, the boundaries between functionality and formality often blur, creating a dynamic interplay where the past, present, and future converge. This sprawling metropolis serves as a canvas for spontaneous creativity, revealing itself through stacks of chairs, patched walls, and repurposed objects that frequently go unnoticed.

Bubble Gum Stuck on My Shoe highlights how these spontaneous creations embody the resourcefulness of urban life, showcasing the beauty in what is often overlooked. The images are fragments, moments snatched in medias res, the way they might be experienced by a passerby. Through this lens, Bubble Gum Stuck on My Shoe transforms the streets into a gallery, bringing everyday objects back into their public context. This exploration is further influenced by my overwhelming experience of Mexico City, where the interventions resonate with the city’s vastness and complexity.

The project had full funding and was set to be plastered in the neighborhoods of Juárez, Condesa, Roma, Polanco, Doctores, Centro, Santa Maria, and San Rafael during the week of ZONA MACO 2025. However, funding was withdrawn a day before it was meant to go to print. I spent months photographing and documenting these ephemeral moments, pitching the project to multiple sponsors, securing funding, and setting everything in motion. Then, as often happens, the support vanished. The project, once tangible and imminent, was suddenly suspended—caught in a limbo of dependence on collectors, brands, and sponsors. In this system, an idea can be fully realized one day and completely undone the next.

I remembered that in Mexico, there’s no such thing as a problem—only a solution. If the city thrives on adaptation, then why shouldn’t this project? If it couldn’t materialize in the streets, then it would have to exist somewhere else.

Thus, Bubble Gum Stuck on My Shoe is no longer a physical installation; it has mutated, re-emerged, and found an alternative route. It now lives in a digital space. With the help of fellow colleagues, we created uma mancha digital, where people genuinely believed the posters were displayed and were actively seeking them out during Zona MACO. This serves as a reflection of the very makeshift ingenuity it aimed to document. The lesson learned was not just in the images, but in the process itself: improvisation, reinvention, and the ability to keep going, even when the path is unexpectedly altered.

In the end, the city finds a way—and so does the work.

Colonia Juarez

Colonia Condesa

Colonia Roma

Colonia Polanco

Colonia Doctores

Colonia Centro

Colonia Santa Maria

Colonia San Rafael

This project is in collaboration with
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Thank you and made possible with the support of

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CAROLINA PIMENTA

3-9 FEBURARY 2025

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