The sentiment I get from the critical commentary and the essay is the alcoholism in Urban Guatemala is causal for endemic aberrations and an impediment to societal progression. I would caution against overarching force-causing claims by perhaps endorsing a "formation stories" approach elaborated by historical sociologists Daniel Hirschman and Ariail Reed. For example, how does postcolonialism, queer assemblages, and neoliberalism intersect with violence and alcoholism in Urban Guatemala?
This visual evokes a powerful message about the intersection of racialization and environmental injustices that warrants deeper investigation. The layering of statistical data gathered from census tracts with other information such as "brownfield sites" using cartography serves an indispensable tool for visualizing how racializing assemblages manifest spatially. It reminds us of the influential work of Ian McHarg, prior to the advent of GIS technologies in his 1969 published book, Design with Nature.
The visualization captures the prolonged interactions between human and more-than-human entities and how they have transformed over the years. It also directly advances the gendered and indentity politics of toxicities, both spatially and temporally.
This image juxtaposes a scultpure meant to inspire feelings of confidence in the future, greatness, and progress with census data speaking of a racially divided city. It raises the question of who is includes in this narrative of progress, and at whose expense it may be achieved.
The visualization supports the argument that pollution does, at least somewhat, stay inside particular (political) borders. The aim is to challenge a particular discourse of air-as-equalizer that stands in the way of a social justice approach to tackling air pollution by framing air as a human rights issue.
The visualisation communicates the temporary visibility of toxicity in the river through algal blooms, as well as the immediate yet incomplete solution: manual removal. The picture illustrates how an immediate 'solution' might in fact perpetuate the underlying problem.
The visualization and caption tell us how 'toxicity' influences cartographic representations of place. Limited by technologies of measure, that are juxtaposed with embodied measures of toxicity, allows us to rethink the politics of measurements that visualize space and map toxicity in specific places.
This visualization is a layered, in-your-face, critique of alcoholism and masculinity in Guatemala. The artist transforms the El Borracho Loteria card into this triptych of a dick-head that suggests alcoholism is prevalent across socio-economic status. Mohamed situates this image within a discussion of toxic masculinity in Guatemala. . His interpretation contextualizes this image as social-critique showing its multifaceted connections to art and male culture.
The visualization and caption are each very powerful in terms of critique of urban planning. The violence of the sign and "annihilation of people by law" appear to work in tandem to criminalize people in urban spaces. The sentiment is one of raced, sexed, and classed violence, all of which are toxic. Even the sign's color itself, the color pink which has often been used by corporations to monetize women's sexuality with color codes, conveys a sense of public/private violence simultaneously.
The image shows the beginning of a toxic discovery preceded by a local human intervention. In this case, the mining of sea sand by locals represents a direct impact on nature, which introduces us to discover toxicity even on the deep nature far away from its common sources as a result of our consumption.