Since the late 90’s, Iñaki Bonillas has established a relationship with photography in his work. With a regard for aesthetics and the conceptual practices of the 60’s and 70’s, Bonillas has been gradually isolating the elements
that constitute, not photography but the photographic act –camera, film, shutter, darkroom practice, etc.–, to later connect them to diverse non-photographic procedures.
In 2003 Bonillas started working around the vast photo archives of his grandfather, J. R. Plaza, of which he has developed a series of reinterpretations. He has linked elements that at first seemed incompatible: on the one hand a personal, biographical narrative that consists of private anecdotes and emotions, and on the other a quasi-scientific sense of compilation, classifying, and archiving that bring an archaeological and nostalgic quality into his work.
Iñaki Bonillas has had solo exhibitions at various museums and institutions in America and Europe, including the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City and La Virreina Centre de la Imatge in Barcelona, Spain, as well as participated in a number of important group shows including Mexico: Resisting the Present at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, France, in 2012. Bonillas is represented by galleries in Mexico, Belgium, Germany and Spain.
