Onnis Luque | DOMINIO: An Unfinished Visual Archive of Architectural Extractivism

Sand, stone, and earth are among the most extracted materials on the planet—yet their removal is rarely pictured, let alone understood as foundational to the built environment. In the exhibition DOMINIO: An Unfinished Visual Archive of Architectural Extractivism, on view in the Newmark Gallery at Art Omi from March 21–May 31, 2026, architectural photographer Onnis Luque traces these often-invisible origins of construction back to the raw landscapes from which they are born. 

What began in 2014 as a roadside encounter with a sand mine evolved into a years-long investigation of Mexico’s extractive geographies—from the Mezquital Valley to the Highlands of Chiapas, the Sierra de las Mitras to the Yucatán Peninsula. Through his lens, Luque captures the aftermath of relentless extraction: fractured hillsides, gaping quarries, and industrial scars etched into the land.

These photographs challenge the dominant visual culture of architecture, which glorifies pristine forms while obscuring the socio-ecological violence embedded in their production. They reveal a terrain shaped not just by machines, but by ideologies: capitalism, modernism, colonialism, and the myth of nature as inexhaustible resource. 

DOMINIO makes visible what architectural images often conceal: that buildings are rooted not only in place, but in the distant voids left behind by their materials. The exhibition questions photography’s own complicity in sustaining architecture’s myths. Can images reclaim critical ground? Can we reimagine architectural production beyond extraction? Can we inhabit the planet without eroding the very systems that sustain life?

DOMINIO is both documentation and provocation—a visual archive that reclaims visibility for the landscapes architecture depends on—and asks us to confront the cost of what we build.

Onnis Luque | DOMINIO: An Unfinished Visual Archive of Architectural Extractivism is curated by Julia van den Hout, Senior Architecture Curator.

Join us for the opening of Onnis Luque | DOMINIO: An Unfinished Visual Archive of Architectural Extractivism in the Newmark Gallery on Saturday, March 21 from 1–3 PM.

Free and open to the public.

RSVP essential.