Noel Caban 

In my work, I map the textures of displacement, loss, and renewal embedded within the urban landscape. Using found and discarded materials like insulation, plastic, concrete, paint, and street detritus. I record the quiet persistence of surfaces that have absorbed time, labor, and neglect. Each piece carries the residue of history: layers and traces of what remains after use, after purpose, after visibility. I value authenticity and observation. Neglected surfaces, for me, become metaphors for memory, endurance, fragility, and decay. They are not a means to an end but integral to a process of becoming. In this sense, my work is not a passive backdrop, but an active participant in revealing the unseen architectures of power that shape the everyday.

 

In recent years, my practice has expanded into the digital realm, using artificial intelligence as both a catalyst and a conceptual tool. I approach AI not as a neutral tool but as a social mirror, a reflection of collective memory and omission. The biases, distortions, and repetitions embedded in algorithms echo the same forces that produce displacement and inequity in the physical world. Through this dialogue with machine learning, I continue to explore how truth, like material, is layered, unstable, and continually reassembled. In this respect, the work is an act of reclamation, of materials, histories, and voices that might otherwise remain unseen. It is a practice of respeto: a recognition of what once was and what endures.