Dinosaur – work in progress

MUDE 4 by Alfredo De Stefano

“Dinosaur gives museological photography archives new readings, with interventions in the desert using real fossils or other materials from popular culture about dinosaurs.”

Photographs by Alfredo De Stefano appear as a slideshow installation on a monitor in the museum’s dinosaur skeleton display area.

This offsite installation is a collaborative presentation between the Courtenay and District Museum and the Comox Valley Art Gallery as part of the convergent program Offsite_Onsite that included a research and production residency prior to the current exhibition: Under One Sky (26 June – 4 September 2021) onsite at the Comox Valley Art Gallery.

“My Dinosaur series re-interprets my photographic archive on fossils, new discoveries of dinosaurs and paleontological investigations that I have done with scientists from the Museo del Desierto / Desert Museum (MUDE), the most important natural history museum in Mexico. In MUDE, many paleontological discoveries in northern Mexico are studied and investigated.

The state of Coahuila, where I live, is considered one of the ten most important regions in the world for paleontological discoveries of new species of dinosaurs as well as other reptiles. The collections at the museum hold many types of fossils, marine and terrestrial reptiles, among which are dinosaurs. In some of those discoveries I was involved. Paleontologists from various countries of the world, including Canada, have come to study and work with the museum.

During my years at the museum, I worked on various scientific projects and scientific dissemination on Mexican fossils such as books and exhibitions. I have worked, and continue to do so, with the museum scientists to document discoveries and have edited books of all kinds of Mexican fossils. I have an extensive photographic archive on fossils and I continue to photograph paleontological pieces from the museum’s collection.”

Alfredo De Stefano, Saltillo, Coahuila, Mexico
adestefano.com