A Card for J.R. Plaza

Aside from the iconographic archive, Bonillas inherited from his grandfather a film encyclopedia and a leather folder, where Plaza kept a curious collection of souvenirs and documents that he considered to be of vital importance: the guarantee for his Swiss Army knife, the instructions for a slide projector, a picture of his secondary school classmates and, what interests us in this case, a sheet of black cardboard where Plaza attached all of the business cards that he collected throughout his life, during his time in various jobs and companies. Mixed in among them, however, are several other calling cards that are no longer corporate ones, but which were designed and typed by him, who knows for what purpose, with information that appears totally fictitious.

This fascinating mix of reality and fiction inspired Bonillas to create this piece, in which the imaginary jobs are accompanied by different portraits of Plaza carrying out an action that is illustrative of the position that appears on the card. The search for photographic matches led also the artist to a conclusion about the nature of the hundreds of portraits of his grandfather in the archive: the only way to amass such a large quantity of photographs of one’s self is by procuring them one’s self; there is no other explanation for the fact that Plaza himself is the decisively central figure in his collection. It was evident to the artist, then, that the business card corresponding to the work that Plaza was most dedicated to in his life, even without being entirely conscious of it, could be none other than “self-portraitist.” And so he decided to add this card to his grandfather’s collection.