Beneath the eye

What pieces or projects have you been working on lately?
My processes are slow… I’ve been working for some time on a series called Líneas imaginarias, which explores how we’ve historically related to our surroundings, systematizing them. The most recent part of the project addresses time as one of these imaginary lines, and drawing on ideas about geological temporality, I’ve been creating different series and pieces, always reflecting through a photographic lens.

What did you learn (or unlearn) while working on them?
I relearned the joy of spending long hours working and experimenting in the darkroom, something I hadn’t done in years. I fell in love again with mistakes, the unexpected, the unrepeatable. I reconnected with the memory of the body and movement in the dark, as well as with the loss of the sense of time. I began this series during a residency in Norway over autumn and winter, so that time in the darkroom became an extension of the exterior darkness, and vice versa.

What words, ideas or emotions were going through your head?
Ideas related to geology, deep time, the permanence of the image, the ephemeral, silence; a materiality that affects another, leaves its mark; the differences between presentation and representation, collage and assemblage, repetition.

Were there any conversations, movies, music, or books that made their way into that work?
There were many references that emerged through long-distance conversations with Antonia Alarcón, for a text she wrote about my work during that period, when I was away from Mexico and she stayed in my home (and my library).

What's been the most difficult thing you've faced recently in your creative process?
The implications of changing materiality and everything that entails. Moving from the two-dimensional to the three-dimensional; the way the body engages so differently when there is matter, weight, and volume. The changes in process times, adjusting tools, frustration. Asking for help. Learning again. Questioning everything again.

If your life were a movie this month, what would it be called and who would write the soundtrack?
Beneath the eye, there is the sun that shines. It would be atmospheric, almost visual, somewhere between resonances and concrete sounds… I’m drawn to the work of Concepción Huerta.

Recommend one or more artists you follow who inspire you, and tell us what you like most about their work or their way of working.
The list is long, but I think the most inspiring aspect is being able to have a dialogue with the artists I’m closest to right now and learning from them. I think of conversations with artists I admire, such as Fabiola Menchelli, Andrea Bores, Sumie García Hirata, and Natalia Bermúdez.