WASHINGTON, DC.- Camila Mancilla’s Homesick exhibition at the District of Architecture is a profound exploration of how architecture, memory, and emotion intertwine. Utilizing found objects, cutouts from books and magazines, as well as digital drawings and paintings, her work is deeply rooted in architectural theory. Through the act of cutting, Mancilla transforms spaces—both metaphorically and literally—into stages where nostalgia, illness, and memory collide.



"In my work, cutting architecture is not just a process of revealing what lies behind a facade. Each cut I make is an intervention that goes beyond mere exposure; it is a transformation that contaminates and reconfigures space," Mancilla reflects. "The home becomes a stage where memory, nostalgia, and illness intertwine."



Her process is heavily influenced by Georges Perec’s concept of fragmentation, where architecture is decomposed, and its layers of memory and emotion are revealed. The cutting, as she applies it, disrupts the continuity of space, exposing scars left by time and the disintegration of the home as an idealized refuge.



Through her reconfigurations, Mancilla invites viewers to rethink the traditional notion of the home as a space of comfort and health, proposing instead that homes are also sites of illness and fragility. Her cuts reveal how nostalgia can act as a destructive force, and how architecture mirrors the complexities of human desires, anxieties, and the passage of time.



Each piece in Homesick serves as both a physical and emotional map, where fragmentation not only destroys but also reveals new ways to experience what remains. "Cutting interrupts, but it also creates a new way to see or experience what remains," Mancilla concludes, reminding us that in the act of destruction lies the potential for deeper understanding.



Camila Mancilla is an architect from Chilean Patagonia and a PhD candidate at the Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center at Virginia Tech, currently residing in Alexandria, Virginia. Her work and research focus on cutting techniques, employing methods such as collage, photomontage, and assemblage to explore theories and philosophies within the architectural discipline. Her research delves into the technique of cutting in architectural drawings, and she works as an academic, researcher, designer, and illustrator, both for institutions and independently. Her work has been exhibited across Europe and America, exploring themes of architecture, memory, and identity.



The techniques used in her work involve repurposing existing materials, such as found objects and printed media, which serve as the primary inspiration and development of her pieces. By altering these materials through cutting with various tools—scissors, knives, X-Acto knives, and saws—she finds ways to combine, remake, and transform them using multiple media, including new technologies such as AI, 3D printing, AR, and audiovisual projections. This process aims to create pieces that retain the essence of the initial found element while exploring the duality between the past and the present, life and death.