Project Description

Two versions of the same island. One frame.

From inside the crumbling shell of an abandoned building on Cozumel’s waterfront, a cruise ship sits offshore — gleaming, massive, and utterly indifferent to the ruin it’s framed by. Graffiti covers every surface within reach. The concrete ceiling peels and sags. Rebar reaches into open air where walls used to be. And through the gap, floating on Caribbean blue, is a vessel carrying thousands of people who will spend a few hours on this island and never see this building at all.

The contrast isn’t subtle and it isn’t accidental. This is what tourism looks like from the other side of the frame — the Cozumel that exists between the cruise pier and the beach clubs, the structures that time and weather and neglect have returned to the rock. Someone painted Dios crea su propio destino — God creates his own destiny — on the wall. It reads differently depending on which direction you’re looking.

The ship will be gone by morning. The walls will still be here.