Un deseo por saber más sobre la experiencias de todo aquello que es ajeno.

La selección de obra aquí presente nace a partir de una serie de conversaciones y encuentros que fueron parte de Virtual Critique Group (VCG, grupo de critica virtual), un grupo en línea conformado por artistas internacionales que busca conectar a artistas con otros artistas y su arte. A través de esta exposición, Paola López genera un espacio para el encuentro de una serie de piezas cargadas de memorias, imaginarios, rituales, desplazamientos, migración y objetos pasajeros provenientes de artistas de Colombia, India y México.

Anemoia, el titulo de la exposición, entrelaza la obra al hacer referencia a un anhelo o deseo que permanece siempre inalcanzable. No obstante, dicho concepto no pretende limitar la interpretación de la obra, sino guiarla gentilmente. Los gestos rituales de Avantika Khanna o Cristina Umaña por ejemplo, demuestran como lugar y objeto son tan capaces de movimiento como la instalación migrante de Raúl de Lara. Entre tanto, Enrique Argote sutilmente nos recuerda de la cruda realidad socioeconómica sin dejar de conversar con los objetos locales curados por Irene Trujillo y Paola López. Dentro del mismo espacio, Andrea Perales sintetiza una memoria personal con los flujos de bienes y personas que caracterizan el mundo contemporáneo y sus redes de interconexión. 

Aunque cada obra permanezca una pieza individual, su congregación dentro del microcosmos de la galería sugiere la existencia de puentes capaces de conectar lo singular con lo múltiple, lo solitario con lo convivial y lo desconocido con la curiosidad. Por lo tanto, al cruzar a través de las diferencias con las que nos presenta e invitarnos a encontrarnos con lo foráneo, Anemoia la exposición, fácilmente excede las limitaciones de anemoia la palabra. 

UNA HISTORIA RECONTADA

La hauntología como resistencia en el recuerdo del pasado

Uno no sabe: no por ignorancia, sino porque este no-objeto, 

esta presencia no presente, este estar-allí de un ausente o difunto 

ya no pertenece al conocimiento. Al menos ya no a eso

que uno cree que conoce por el nombre de conocimiento.

-Jacques Derrida, Espectros de Marx, 1994

La historia ha sido escrita por aquellos que triunfan, mientras que aquellos considerados Otro, rara vez tienen la oportunidad de contar o registrar su propio conjunto de experiencias. La historia es falible y famosa por sus inexactitudes, dado que la gente recuerda el pasado a través de una lente claramente sesgado y luego transmite versiones particulares. Versiones que  continúan cambiando dentro de un registro histórico que es más una creación que un registro real. Esta creación, narración y registro de la historia ha permitido la formación y prevalencia de regímenes hegemónicos de visualidad, temporalidad y espacialidad en todo el Sur Global.

El concepto de la hauntología de Jacques Derrida postula el retorno y/o la persistencia de elementos del pasado, tomando la forma de fantasmas que acechan a la sociedad Occidental desde más allá de la tumba. De esta forma, la presencia es reemplazada por el no-origen diferido, a través de un método deconstructivo que intenta localizar el origen de la historia pero, sin embargo, inevitablemente depende de un conjunto ya existente de precedentes “históricos”. La hauntología permite la resistencia y agencia dentro de las dinámicas de poder establecidas, ya que a través de su uso, el pasado pierde su capacidad para ejercer un ordenamiento claro de la vida y el conocimiento obtenido. La hauntología apunta hacia atrás en el tiempo, actuando como una forma de conocimiento totalmente diferente a los modos de conocimiento actuales, una forma de conocimiento que se enfoca en restos y ruinas, espectros y el pasado a través de la deconstrucción y sin la linealidad de la historicidad establecida por Occidente.

Los artistas que participan en ANEMOIA miran al pasado como una forma de incidir en el presente. La materia desechada, los objetos utilitarios y los materiales cotidianos se convierten en la materia de la que está hecha la historia. Registran y reexaminan el pasado, forzando confrontaciones con aquello que hemos olvidado o descartado pero que pretenden mantener vivo, presente y acechando el momento contemporáneo. Estos objetos espectrales de un tiempo pasado cuentan historias específicas dentro de un espacio y lugar que se sale de las normas tradicionales de la Institución Occidental que ha intentado con tanta firmeza ordenar el pasado de una manera “adecuada”. Las narrativas que cuentan estos artistas luchan contra las estructuras dominantes y los imperios de la visualidad, amenazando con desestabilizarlos.

Andrea Perales captura instantes en el tiempo, mientras que las estampas parcialmente escondidas emergen de un fondo de lino convirtiéndose en testimonios tanto de cosas como de momentos. Casi como si uno estuviera observando un camino muy transitado que ha recogido al azar las marcas de las personas, las cosas y los eventos que han ocurrido en su superficie. Las piezas en sí se trabajan meticulosamente a través de la recolección de estampillas de alimentos que han viajado por todo el mundo con productos y el bordado que las mantiene delicada pero decididamente en su lugar. Perales reflexiona sobre el capitalismo global y la migración, mostrando “retazos” que rondan el presente a través de las historias de sus viajes; contando así la historia del movimiento a través de fronteras y a través del mercado con las pegatinas desechadas que nuestros productos llevan como un marcador de su origen. Un hecho que que le importa poco o nada al consumidor. Se centra en esta historia minúscula e ignorada y, al hacerlo, desestabiliza la forma en que vemos, pensamos y entendemos el movimiento, los viajes y la historia de los productos que terminan en nuestros estantes y en nuestros cuerpos.

En la obra de Cristina Umaña, la superficie flexible de la tela sirve como un registro de su uso. Maleable, cambiante, y con la habilidad de conservar las marcas de sus interacciones. Flexible, escultural, efímera e incluso permanente hasta cierto punto, la tela para Umaña es básicamente la nostalgia encarnada. La obra refleja una angustia intangible relacionada con la memoria, pues los objetos en los que se enfoca como portadores de esta memoria son las cosas cotidianas, obvias y simples que forman parte de la vida; objetos que tienden a desaparecer o descartarse con el paso del tiempo. En una ferviente búsqueda por preservar lo fugaz, Umaña crea una obra que acecha el presente y está cargada con las acciones cotidianas relacionadas con los objetos conservados… la tela se convierte en una escultura suave, un monumento a la memoria. Un monumento que, sin embargo, se resiste a las tácticas de monumentalización del recuerdo defendidas por Occidente, con sus imponentes, rígidos y masivos monumentos a la historia.

La colaboración de Irene Trujillo y Paola López ofrece una instancia más de un enfoque hauntológico, centrado en un enfoque descentralizado que consiste en recolectar objetos a través de especificaciones previamente acordadas. Estos objetos, este tipo de archivo, no es lineal o histórico en el sentido tradicional; no busca rastrear una o incluso múltiples historias específicas, sino más bien crear una comprensión más profunda de un lugar a través de su basura.

Las hojas meticulosamente talladas de Raúl de Lara se relacionan con el concepto de lo descartado, así como con temas de traslado, migración y narrativas dominantes. De Lara se enfoca en cada hoja, creándolas una por una, y forzando un encuentro con todas y cada una de las piezas talladas para contrarrestar la narrativa de las hojas como montones o partes de un todo indistinguibles entre sí. Adaptativas, singulares y a la vez parte de una serie, las hojas hablan de especies invasoras. Un concepto ampliamente aceptado cuando se trata de plantas o animales que se han trasladado o migrado desde su punto de origen, y a la vez un tema importante del momento contemporáneo en el cual las fronteras se están cerrando y los migrantes se ven obligados a buscar refugio sin la documentación adecuada. De Lara cuestiona nuestra comprensión del movimiento humano, creando paralelos entre plantas y personas, como una forma de resaltar nuestras nociones occidentalizadas retrógradas y preconcebidas de la migración.

Los artistas que participan en ANEMOIA resisten la espectralidad, la linealidad histórica y la visualidad de Occidente, negándose a participar en los modos “tradicionales” de encuentro, visión y comprensión. La hauntología de Derrida está funcionando en todo momento, desentrañando el conocimiento desconocido y poniéndolo en exhibición, haciendo vacilar las certezas establecidas. La inquietud de la memoria, el pasado y lo descartado se desarrolla como una contranarrativa a las hegemonías dominantes. La forma táctil de conocer, clara a lo largo de la obra, confronta al espectador, filtrándose en la conciencia colectiva y redefiniendo las relaciones con los espacios, lugares y cosas. Esto ofrece narrativas de resistencia y contratemporalidad que contrastan marcadamente con las narrativas universalizadoras y totalizadoras del capitalismo, el progreso y la historicidad lineal.

Escrito por: Adriana Kuri Alamillo

ASSEMBLAGES FOR THE FUTURE

Memory in a time of overstimulation

A body doesn’t coincide with itself. It’s not present to itself. It is already on the move... 

bringing its past up to date in the present, through memory, habit, reflex and so on.

- Brian Massumi, Politics of Affect

As of late my memory of the recent past has been failing me. Perhaps the months of monotonous stagnation provoked by the pandemic have rendered the need for my brain to differentiate between one week and the next unimportant, inessential, arbitrary. Or perhaps, I’ve been so swept up by the banality of daily tasks and self-care that I can only faithfully move through the sanity of immediacy. Whatever the case, it’s as if from this privileged position of contemplation, I’ve forgotten to remember.

When Benedetto Croce, the early 20th century Italian philosopher, pronounced that “all history is contemporary history,”1 he could not have anticipated the coming of a time of high speed and long distance global interconnection, where the proliferation of information is so expansive and continuous that it can easily overwhelm a human mind. Yes, memory and imagination included. Croce believed that history could not be understood without the study of those who write history, without historiography. He was correct. History is always a matter of perspective and interpretation. Writing history requires the historian to be situated in a place, a time and a context; it’s a matter of being materially embedded in a situation or event from which the historian gives shape to the narratives which describe the events they study, whether they lived through them or not.

21st century historians however — affected as much by the endless streams of information and sensory stimuli as the budding influencers we’re all becoming — are faced with a double challenge: not only must they understand their positions as interpreters of the events unfolding around the world, but they must grapple with

1 Croce, Benedetto, Theory and History of Historiography. George G. Harrap and Company, London, 1921. p.13.

the inability to retain and properly comprehend the unfathomable amount of data swirling around them both physically and digitally. Historians must adapt to the age in which Russian constructivism, fake news, videos of young girls dancing to the latest pop songs and daily broadcasts of large scale catastrophes can all coexist within the same highly polished screen. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to craft univocal and stable narratives. And today, in this time of self-curation and exhibition, are we not all historians of ourselves?

I wager that my memory loss then, is perhaps not a loss per se, but simply a lack of retention, an inability to keep up and to properly interpret what is happening around me in a single story. There is a fundamental disconnect between the linear speed of the endless digital timeline which so many of us pretend mirrors our lives, and the multiplicity of real and ongoing histories with which we are faced in this hyperconnected and globalized society. The human brain is simply incapable of keeping up and giving shape to the chaos and complexity of the contemporary world. What does it mean then — in an age in which a blur of multiple histories constantly interpenetrate each other right before our eyes — to say that all memory is contemporary memory?

The latest exhibition at Mexico City based gallery, Galería Te extraño, gathers a collection of artists from Mexico, Colombia and India in a material dialogue explicitly centered around memory and forgetting, migration and displacement, nostalgia and the existent relationships between objects, people and territories. But behind the discourse of the show, knowingly or not, the artists approach and tease their mutual implication in the global systems of communication, trade and information, hinting to a more opaque but no less present relationship to memory: memory in a time of overstimulation.

Anemoia and the non-human

Anemoia, which is the title of the exhibition, means “nostalgia for a time you’ve never known.” Anemoia allows us to express in a word the kind of longing we may feel when we watch a Godard film or when someone older than us tells us about “the summer of love,” or this or that feel-good-moment when the prospects of a new technology or ideology still spelled something close to a possible utopia. But for the younger generations, who’ve grown up in a time when technology has devolved into nothing but a mundane dependency and who are taught to be conscious of both the horrors of modernity and the incoming waves of climate devastation, anemoia has become a kind of everyday experience. It appears as a nostalgia for a less cynical and anxious time, when the future looked bright and when, in a dangerously romanticized conception of the past, it may have felt like our actions could have a tangible effect on history.

However, Anemoia the exhibition, I believe confronts us with a very different kind of nostalgia. One of the central pieces in the show, a pair of photographs by Avantika Khanna featuring a series of dried orange rinds — which the artist collected throughout the course of her time in Chicago — float quietly away from the city in the waters of Lake Michigan. The aged orange rinds with multiple shades ranging from bright orange to a musky brown ooze with a sense of temporality, they hint at the distinct times in which their once ripe interiors made their way into some digestive system or another, becoming indistinguishable from the body that consumed them. The fleshy textures of the fruit remnants absently traversing the light currents of the lake, likewise, drive the imagination to project into their future, to wonder what will become, or in fact, what is becoming of them within the dark blue expanse.

Khanna’s pieces evoke more than the ritual gesture of an artist in transition from one city to the next, they entangle the artist’s own journey and remembrance with the journey of an object, as it too, becomes implicated in a moving assemblage, in an event, in a process of becoming-world. It’s no surprise then, that one of the materials listed in the work’s description is Lake Michigan itself, a moving body composed of and in relation with, countless other named or unnamed bodies-in-relation.

The photographs function as a memento of a departure in multiple directions, something to remind the spectator that beyond their own senses and presence, the world remains in motion, alive. In experiencing the orange peels, one may be confronted with the questions: where did they go? Are they still orange peels? And perhaps most strikingly, what would it be like to be an orange peel floating aimlessly through the lake? Khanna’s photograph produces the kind of anemoia one might feel for the non-human — a nostalgia for a kind of existence, a kind of movement and presence one can never actually experience, but which nevertheless generates a longing for that which is completely foreign.

Similarly, the collaborative piece presented by Paola Lopez and Irene Trujillo, presents an eclectic collection of objects compiled and assembled by Lopez upon her return to Mexico City according to specifications given by Trujillo. The project, aptly titled Curadurias (Spanish for “curations”), marks a process of co-creation both with each other, as artists, and with the city and its vibrant material inhabitants. As one artist undergoes a process of guided refamiliarization with her hometown and the other curates a series of prompts and directions, the objects themselves enter into new relationships with each other, becoming capable of expressing something previously impossible. The piece includes an intentional assemblage composed by: pieces of a wire mesh, a small pink strainer, paint rollers, four half egg shells, an old orange sliced in half, three charcoal smudgers, a bone folder, a green bottle cap, a metal ruler, a blue plastic butterfly, fishing line, a cleaning rag, an acrylic mixing stick, etc. And an unintentional assemblage: the cleaning staff, the wall text, the other artists, the spectators and their ideas, the weather, the sociopolitical climate, the dust trailing slowly but constantly into the space, the quality of the light, this very paper, the ink on its pages and so on.

In the parlance of Deleuze and Guattari an agencement or an assemblage (which is the closest translation to date in the English language), is a concept that vaguely denotes an open-ended arrangement of elements (material or otherwise), and which allows us to think of a group of things and their interrelations without diminishing the complexity that they may be capable of. In the words of anthropologist Anna Tsing, assemblages are: “open-ended gatherings,” that, “[...]don’t just gather lifeways; they make them.”2 Curadurias, much like Khanna’s Honoring Place, presents the spectator with an assemblage which is continuously giving shape to itself, including more than just a series of curated objects lying on the floor, but gathering and releasing elements as viewers and ideas come and go, conversations start and wind down, as a fly buzzes around the space.

As artist and philosopher Erin Manning points out, assemblages allow us to think of gatherings and events as “a doing doing itself,”3 thus, they allow us to think of the world — in all its interdependent complexity — becoming-world, always changing, but never less itself than it was before.

These assemblages give shape to but nonetheless exceed the boundaries of the exhibition, they hint to the larger systems of movement, infrastructure and displacement which invariably entangle the cast of international artists and their work. Whether it’s Paola Lopez’s journey through the city, the orange peels in transit to an unknown destiny, or the shipment of artwork from one country to the next which allows Anemoia to take place, the hyper-connection and interdependency of our globalized world shines through, reminding us of the countless lives and moving parts necessary to bring together this curation.

2 Tsing, Anna. The Mushroom at the End of the World. Princeton University Press, 2015. p. 28. 3 Manning, Erin; Massumi, Brian, Immediations. Open Humanities Press, London, 2019. p.282

Migration, territory and the speed of art

Going from the subatomic to the cosmic, the concept of the assemblage allows us to think of complex systems as their elements interrelate at different scales. The morning streets of Mexico City for instance, become saturated daily by the sounds of peddlers and grey market laborers buying old metal parts, offering tamales, camotes, tacos, or like the main element of Enrique Argote’s Una quincena de escobas, the greenish brown stick brooms which at one point or another have populated every Mexican household. Argote’s work appears purely aesthetic at first sight, the fifteen brooms neatly tied up into a larger bundle sit unobtrusively on the gallery floor, reminiscent of the palm leaf palapas one may find dotting the Mexican coastlines. But a closer look at the work and the photographs which accompany it alert the viewer to the fact that the quincena (Spanish for a group of fifteen things) in the title, refers not only to the fifteen stick bundles, but also to the fifteen day interval in which salaried workers in Mexico receive their pay. The prices of the three photographs reflect: the actual price of the fifteen brooms; the price of the brooms plus the cost of printing, framing and a commission for the artist; and the gallery listing price of a work of this kind accordingly. Through this simple gesture, Argote manages to make a commentary on the way art labor and ‘non-art labor’ are differently valued, while simultaneously reminding us of the socioeconomic conditions of a vast majority of the Mexican population.

In a similarly powerful yet subtle gesture, US based Mexican artist Raúl de Lara mailed his submission for the show; an installation consisting of a series of hand carved wooden leaves speckled with dew.

Fleeing cartel related violence, de Lara and his family left Mexico when Raúl was a child, looking for safety in the United States. Years later he’s become a DACA recipient, allowing him to live and work in the US legally, but making it nigh impossible for him to travel outside the country. In this way, the apparently fragile, travelling hand carvings installed in a Mexico City based gallery serve not only as art objects for an audience to consume, but to obviate the uncomfortable and often dangerous relationships with place and movement which de Lara, like many other immigrants in a similar situation, live every day.

Whether due to physical, climate or economic violence, the states of exception caused by forced migration are rapidly becoming a more and more common condition across the globe, making it ever more prescient for people to listen to migrants and to understand the systems which create said conditions.

Both Una quincena de escobas and Hojas talladas, move transversally across these global sociopolitical assemblages of labor, violence and movement, blurring the lines between politics and poetry to make clear the disembodied relationships art audiences and laborers unconsciously maintain with those Others who make the art world possible. De Lara’s piece also serves as a conceptual bridge between migration, low wage labor and memory, leading us to Andrea Perales’ Produce.

This piece started in an old apartment as a personal collection of fruit stamps that very well could have been of the same brand of orange as Avantika Khanna’s lake bound rinds. The piece was originally a gift for an old friend and roommate consisting of the aforementioned fruit stickers now embroidered onto linen. As the process suggests, the most mundane of disposable items serve to give life to a remembrance, to a kind of monument to a past connection which opens the potential to re-live, to reinterpret something cherished. Like Hojas talladas, it also generates anemoia for a potential which wasn’t actualized, for how things could have been. Simultaneously however, Produce is only possible thanks to the very fruit which helped sustain Perales and her friend during their years together; fruit which was likely farmed by low wage immigrants, subordinate to international corporations, laws and trade routes, in other words, the global assemblages which the artist and this piece form only a small part of.

While we can only speculate as to where exactly the fruits came from or who was tasked with the handling of de Lara’s wooden leaves during their journey across borders, these questions nevertheless generate a sense of interdependence, cueing the spectator into the countless other unseen relationships present in the day to day.

Memory and narrative in this situation, as attempts at the interpretation of material and immaterial relationships, are entirely bound up into these entangled networks which remain too complex to ever fully comprehend. Not only that, but with the advent of digital media, we have gained the capacity to receive an unfathomable amount of stimuli at the speed of information without ever having the time to process it. Simply try to remember what catastrophe was on the news last month. What about last week?

How often do our brains have to renew the things they pay attention to?

Forgetting to remember, or was it vice versa?

“The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time”

- Friedrich Nietzsche

"My imagination, what are you? - I am the stream that feeds the fountain of your mind."

- Hazrat Inayat Khan

There’s a clear difference between the speed at which information moves in the digital space and the speed at which a human brain can comprehend and encode it. Here lies a key aspect of the contemporary relationship between human beings and our tools (digital or otherwise): data or information are external to us, they are tools for measurement and simplification. But as soon as our brains take them, appropriate them, they become memories, stored in our brains but never identically, always in flux, changing as we too, inevitably change, become.

Memories aren’t archives capable of remaining protected and inert through the passing years, they’re not free from the perspectives from which they are recalled, from the present, and from the subjectivities which bring them to mind. In fact, since we cannot inhabit the past in the present, every memory, every present instance of the past, involves some measure of imagination. It is through these mental assemblages — which we call knowledge — and their relationships to those through which we move — which we call the world — that we give shape to a world of our own.

Cristina Umaña’s textile work often revolves around her relationship to her sister, who passed away six years ago. In one instance, she embroidered the blueprints for the way her house could have looked had she been able to build it along with her sister. For Anemoia, Umaña has installed a clothes line populated by bed sheets, pillow covers and shirts dyed pink which are soaked every morning and dry throughout the course of the day. One of the pillow covers — which the artist used to share with her sibling — is embroidered with a personal request to the departed, obviating in the mundane the artist’s nostalgia for their life together. Yet the act of irreversibly changing the appearance of the textiles and the temporality of soaking and drying also suggest a relationship with the inevitability of change, which is not only about letting go of the things one cannot control, but about building something new. When Umaña imagines a possible life with her sister from her present perspective, she turns memory into a kind of world-building, her memories become generative of her art practice.

Thus, anemoia isn’t simply about a nostalgia for a time unknown, but about a yearning for building a relationship with the unknown. Anemoia is about understanding that every memory is a present gesture towards the future, it’s an act which tells a story, which sows the seeds for a new way of traversing our mutual implication in the world. As such, my lack of retention of recent events isn’t the failure of my memory, it’s a normal (and likely healthy) response to a world beyond my grasp. And like the past, the world beyond our grasp can either fill us with impotence or it can vitalize the present with the promise of what remains yet- to-come.

In a time of overstimulation and interconnection, rather than trying to hold on to memory simply as a record of the past, we should understand that like Croce’s historians and Umaña’s textiles, all memory is contemporary memory - the task of the historian isn’t simply to recount a past event, but to actualize it in the present. Similarly, the task of the artist is to generate the world, not to keep it the way it is.

Text by Michel Gantous