CDMX, Mexico
sombras
Cycling symbolizes a sustainable ethos while maintaining a symbiotic relationship with the environment, embodying notions of liberation, fluidity, and interconnectedness. Joy emerges as a transformative catalyst, igniting a collective spirit of responsibility towards nurturing a harmonious coexistence with one another and the ecologies that surround us. Two thousand kilometers of cycling across southern Mexico and parts of Central America formed the basis of research for this body of work. During this time, I explored themes of movement, resilience, grief and environmental extractivism within a meditative and ritualistic framework. The dynamic nature of cycling lent itself to the exploration of form, rhythm, and composition within my art practice, capturing the essence of this experience through carefully selected artifacts resembling time that has passed.
Through artistic interrogation, I navigate the dualities of human and environmental grief, traversing the liminal spaces where personal and planetary narratives converge. The complex and visceral tragedy of loss and profound resonance of collective mourning are articulated, offering a conduit for dialogue and reflection on the existential imperatives of our time. This body of work serves as a contemplative nexus, inviting viewers to navigate the convergence of these grief-laden realms.
Grief serves as a poignant lens through which to examine layered relationships with our surroundings. Environmental extraction results in an ecological imbalance and loss of biodiversity at an unprecedented pace, concealed under an orderly colonial narrative of achievement and progress. This occurs in tandem, most commonly with detrimental impacts on Indigenous communities. In my site-specific research, the Earth itself becomes a grieving entity, mourning the loss of its vital resources and the destruction of its ecosystems. Yet, amidst the grief, the natural world possesses an inherent capacity for regeneration. Efforts towards reciprocity, environmental restoration and conservation while embracing the sustaining aspects of community, joy and play are at the core of this exploration.
The personal lamentation accompanying the loss of a cherished friend in recent years encapsulates the profound emotional terrain traversed in the wake of intimate relationships. This deeply subjective experience of grief unfolds within the realm of individual consciousness, manifesting as a deconstruction and reconstruction of found objects to navigate and reconcile with an unknown I may never understand. There are nuanced parallels of sorrow and longing within environmental extraction, unveiling a collective bereavement provoked by the degradation of natural ecosystems. Here, the loss transcends the personal sphere, resonating across broader ecological networks and implicating the very fabric of planetary life. Each woven ecology (of self, extraction and otherwise) remains both fragile and resilient. Tender growth of new foliage reclaims barren terrain, despite being in the face of loss.
What is left is merely a trace of something, a profoundly collective phenomenon of absence. We are confronted with the complexities of mourning, resiliency, and transformation. The enduring presence of memory lapses. A primer for forgetting, for remembering it all too well. We confront the exigencies of our shared human and ecological condition. We reckon with the multifaceted nature of grief and interrogate our own complicity in perpetuating both individual and systemic forms of loss. A call to stewardship and care is agitated in the face of profound existential uncertainties. Cycling remains a steady presence of hope amidst it all.