2024 (ongoing)
Durante la residencia en La Casa Móvil (Algodonales, Andalucía, España), indagué en la idea cuerpo-como-casa, casa-como-cuerpo, explorando relaciones entre realidades (lo que sean construidas u orgánicas) – internas y externas, del mundo viviente, que habito y que me habitan.
Como viajadora, busqué materiales portátiles, ligeros y cotidianos en la papelería local, y planteé preguntas abstractas para abrir un diálogo con mi cuerpo-casa y la casa-cuerpo del entorno más amplio.
Realicé el proyecto a través de metodologías encarnadas y expandidas, y salió un proceso fluido por medio de la escritura y dibujos lúdicos, y un video como registro de huellas dejadas del entorno en mi cuerpo-casa.
Pasé horas en la sierra siguiendo senderos de cabra, abriendo mis sentidos y saboreando las llamadas de las chicharras, los susurros de los árboles, olores de paja y tomillo silvestre, las texturas de rocas jurásicas, colores y sensaciones del seco y ardiente entorno natural, bañándome en el río, tomando el dulce agua subterráneo y poniendo atención en los animales y plantas alrededor. Jugué con realidades y sistemas construidos como lenguaje – intercambiando las definiciones de cuerpo y casa y experimentando con interconexiones entre sistemas orgánicos.
Fue una experiencia única y experimental de autorreflexión, flujo y conexión corporal que – gracias a tener tiempo, espacio, y desconexión de responsabilidades diarias – me permitió claramente identificar patrones y huellas ecoculturales, seguir un sendero interno, interconectar una red de fragmentos por trazos e hilos, transponer capas de realidades y canalizar ideas conceptuales, internas y externas. El proyecto continúa! Como una rica fuente de ideas.
During my residency at La Casa Móvil (Algodonales, Andalusia, Spain), I explored the idea of body-as-house, house-as-body, delving into the relationships between realities—both constructed and organic/objective—internal and external, of the living world that I inhabit and that inhabits me.
As a traveller, I sought out portable, lightweight, and everyday materials in local stationery stores and posed abstract questions to open a dialogue with my bodyhouse and the housebody of the wider environment.
I carried out the project through embodied and expanded methodologies, resulting in a fluid process through writing and playful drawings (shown in detail below), and a video documenting the traces left by the environment on my bodyhouse.
I spent hours in the mountains following goat trails, opening my senses and absorbing the calls of the cicadas, the whispering trees, the fragrence of straw and wild thyme, the textures of the jurassic rocks, the colors and sensations of the dry, scorching natural environment, while bathing in the river, drinking from the sweet mountain springs, and paying attention to the animals and plants around me. I played with realities and constructed systems as a language—exchanging the definitions of body and home and experimenting with interconnections between organic systems.
It was a unique and experimental experience of self-reflection, flow, and bodily connection that — thanks to having a week of time, space, and a disconnection from daily responsibilities — allowed me to clearly identify ecocultural patterns and traces, follow an inner path, interconnect a network of fragments with strokes and threads, transpose layers of realities, and channel conceptual ideas, both internal and external. The project continues and evolves my work as a rich source of development.
“In my artistic practice, I work with everyday materials and objects to explore relationships between individual and broader, collective realities. Through embodied and expanded methodologies, I experiment with ideas and pose abstract questions to examine constructed realities, deepening my connection with and understanding of myself and the world around me. Here (in Algodonales), by writing and drawing, I investigate the theme ‘bodyhouse / housebody’, from a personal, bodily point of view in relation to the living world. As a traveller, I make use of ordinary, lightweight and portable materials – a notebook, pen and pencil (purchased from the local shop), that’s it!”
“My intention during the residency is to open a dialogue with myself, my body, with the natural world here and with the other artists in the Casa Móvil. I want to play with constructed reality and language, and explore the relationship between my bodyhouse and that of the living world that I inhabit. The residency attracted me for its inherent themes – care (the idea of practising art as a form of self-care and reflection), body and nature. For me, body and nature are almost the same thing, as the concept of bodyhouse that I explore, the body is ‘nature’, intrinsically part of a living system – the body houses a system of living organs and nature houses a system of living bodies. Zooming out, the universe is a bodyhouse, a system housing infinite, interconnected bodies.”
Diagram outlining the language-swapping of concepts ‘body’ and ‘house’ and how their meanings overlap.
“In a world with layers of colonisation and war to gain territory and resources, it’s possible to ask – where are my roots? Where do I belong? ... As I age, my veins are starting to bulge, almost popping up and out of my body, as if they want to make contact with something external, like the roots of an old tree do, popping up and out of the earth. But the objective realities are that I’m not a tree, my bodyhouse is mobile, the earth doesn’t belong to anybody, to anything, we belong inside the housebody of the earth. And little by little, I will become less mobile, as my body returns slowly to her, the earth.”
“On my first day in Algodonales, a few days before starting the residency, I went to find a laundry to wash my clothes. In Google Maps, there was a ‘public laundry’... so I happily went off to investigate it, with my bag of dirty clothes and powdered detergent. But what I found wasn’t a room full of coin-operated washing machines and dryers. Nope, it was a historic shelter with rectangular stone depressions in the floor, full of fresh water from the mountain spring. Nextdoor was the Fuente de Algarrobo (the spring of the Carob tree), accompanied by its namesake tree, with arms outstretched, providing shade. I crouched down and tasted a little pristine, sweet, cold water pouring from one of the outlets. It seemed miraculous on that hot afternoon – a rich gift below the dry earth, bleached by the sun. I thought of the writing of Gloria Anzaldúa and swallowed some of that pure water with the intention to clarify my connection with the subterranean world of the subconscious, and my heart.”
“We live in a fragmented world, constructed from layers of imaginary realities, made by human beings, forming systems –social, political, economic – which value false hierarchies, separating concepts that can’t exist on their own, that belong to an objectively real network: ie – The mind is part of the body, it funcions, depends on and belongs to a network of the entire body. Humans are organisms that are part of the living world, and we belong to it; we depend completely on the earth and its waterways, not the reverse. Aren’t economic systems supposed to serve and support humans, not the other way around? Bodyhouses are inhabitable and interconnected biological organisms. Networks of human perception fragment and malfunction when natural channels and threads are interrupted, separated and broken. I ask myself how I can start to reconnect with the sustainable fonts (springs) of reality, rejoin the threads of perception and reimagine alternative constructed realities?”
“As the dots connect, more dots appear...”
“Networks. Strokes. Imprints. Patterns. Layers. Fragments. Chanelling. Inerconnection.”