Exhibitions
Dog Dream: A Sensory Archaeology of the Cinema of Alejandro G. Iñárritu
From February 22 to July 26, 2026, the exhibition Sueño Perro: Instalaciones Celuloide by Alejandro G. Iñárritu will be presented at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) as a multisensory, globally impactful experience exploring the boundary between film and the visual arts. Conceived by the Oscar-winning Mexican filmmaker, the installation emerges as an expanded celebration of the 25th anniversary of Amores Perros (2000), his influential debut feature.
Far from being merely a commemoration, Sueño Perro functions as a poetic excavation of the filmmaking process itself. During the editing of Amores Perros , more than a million feet of film were left out of the final cut. These images—archived for a quarter of a century at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM)—are now rescued and reactivated by Iñárritu to construct a new space of perception, where cinema ceases to be a closed narrative and becomes living matter.
The installation brings together never-before-seen fragments that encapsulate the social, political, and emotional tensions of Mexico City, tensions that continue to resonate powerfully today. Stripped of their original narrative structure, these sequences are rearranged as a mosaic of celluloid, light, and sound, where multiple 35mm projectors shape an immersive experience. The result is not a narrative, but a constellation of images that questions memory, time, and the persistence of the invisible.
At the heart of the proposal lies a profound reflection on the materiality of analog film. The grain, the flicker, and the warmth of the celluloid become essential expressive elements, evoking an almost tactile sensitivity to the moving image. The film is not merely a medium, but a body: a surface where time accumulates and wears away.
Sueño Perro also marks the third collaboration between Iñárritu and the Fondazione Prada, following the film program Flesh, Mind and Spirit (Seoul, 2009; Milan, 2016) and the virtual reality installation CARNE y ARENA (2017), presented at the Cannes Film Festival and recognized with a special Academy Award. In this new project, the artist continues to expand the boundaries of cinematic language into hybrid territories between installation, memory, and sensory experience.
Iñárritu himself defines this review of previously unseen material as a form of “resurrection.” More than a tribute, the installation proposes a reunion with what was never seen: abandoned images that, when reactivated, acquire a new life. “Like meeting an old friend we’ve never seen before,” the filmmaker suggests, underscoring the ghostly and evocative nature of these film pieces.
Ultimately, Dog Dream poses an open question: how many films exist within a single film? Between memory and oblivion, between what is filmed and what is discarded, the work invites us to rethink cinema not as a finished product, but as a field in constant transformation, where images continue to breathe long after they have been shot.
You may be
interested
...
