what do we exhibit when we exhibit architecture? How to expose something as big and complex as a building or a city and, at the same time, communicate something as elusive as an architectural experience that unfolds (or reveals itself) in time and space? How to approach or represent, in the context of an exhibition, something whose nature is external and would not, in principle, need surfaces or devices to be presented? Can the concept of “non-site” by American artist Robert Smithson help us to understand this paradox? After all, he proposed to transgress the idea of the gallery's border through maps and photographs that indicated the real place where the works took place - the exterior.
This expository character, somehow, always deals with the notions of displacement and lack. If architecture is still seen only as construction with bricks and mortar, the works exhibited will never be “the real” object, but the representation of an idea that has been transposed from its “real” place and still will always be absent from the context of the exhibition.
Deslocal emerges as a mediator who challenges the stability of the pre-conceived idea of architecture as an easily transportable object and displaced from its context. Thus, it opens up a wide field of possibilities on how it is made, experienced, and discussed.