A tireless traveller who studied in Berlin and Barcelona, Chema Alvargonzález focused part of his work on the notion of travel in the broadest sense. He was interested in physical displacement, but also in the sense of metaphorical and inner displacement, as well as memory as a journey. In his conceptual and multimedia production, he used light and words as means of formal research. His series of suitcases needs to be seen in this context.

Between the nineties and the following decade, he built a series of suitcases intervened as light boxes documenting scenarios of travel and displacement. These are old, open suitcases in which he placed an illuminated photograph in one corner and a mirror in the other to duplicate the image. The photographs are of various urban scenes (Barcelona, New York, Berlin, Munich...) and also of natural spaces. Pasillo Munich (Munich Corridor, 2001), from the MACBA Collection, depicts an urban corridor in the city of Munich. As if they were souvenir boxes or warehouses of memory (the deforming element of the mirrors seems to evoke it directly), these items of luggage speak of the past but also of nomadism, a characteristic trait in modern metropolitan life. Some suitcases operate like a kaleidoscope to create illusory spaces, while others have a duplicative effect, like Pasillo Munich. On more than one occasion, the artist has referred to suitcases, journeys and aeroplanes as elements that allude to continuous human transformation, both in the physical realm and the nomadism of ideas. A nomadism that, in the hands of the artist, shapes a new imaginary map full of duplicate paths and fanciful images.