Spiral City 2002, is a film responding to Robert Smithson’s earthwork and related film «Spiral Jetty». Whereas Smithson’s film follows the movement of the artist along the in turning spiral, Spiral City plays off the counterpoint of Mexico City’s grid, working against the upward movement of the camera flying in widening spirals. The film is a testament to a city that is subject to a crystalline like erosion, whereby structures build upon each other and collapse, aswell as being a haunting cartography of the future. Several black and white photographs and a series of paintings also adhere to the series. Together they compose a document of an apparently limitless urban expansion, where the abstract contemplation of mass is inseparable from its social experience.

^{_{Exhibition view of «Farsa y artificio» by Melanie Smith at MARCO, Monterrey, Mexico, 2020}}

^{_{Melanie Smith. Vanishing Landscape 9, 2006. Acrylic on plexiglass, 220 x 180 cm Melanie Smith. Sin título, 2008. Acrylic on plexiglass, 120 x 90 cm}}

^{_{Exhibition view of “Spiral City & Other Vicarious Pleasures” by Melanie Smith at MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, USA, 2009}}