The Quicklime Paradox
Installation 
2025
A radiography of Spain’s collective memory and the erasure of queer people during the White Terror, through the symbolic and chemical agency of quicklime.
“In my work, the use of quicklime—intimately linked to the body—draws from the Andalusian social imaginary and is presented as a patina that is paradoxically protective and caustic, with the power to preserve something it in time or make it disappear. An alchemical agent, capable of transforming shadows into light and monstrosity into beauty and vice versa.”
The two-year research is gathered in the publication The Quicklime Paradox: Memory and Erasure in Andalusia, and was presented at the DAE Graduation Show during Dutch Design Week 2025 in the form of an installation featuring two artefacts - Calados Hasta los Huesos and Under the Limelight.

The Quicklime Paradox was developed during the social design MA at Design Academy Eindhoven and was awarded Cum Laude.

Head of programme: Nadine Botha
Thesis supervisor: Vera Sacchetti




Guillermo Cárdenas © 2026