semillas, 2024
installation, 13 sculptures, zacatecas stoneware, iron engobes & ash glazes, approximately 52 - 54 cm. / 20.5 x 21 in. diameter each, 1 sculpture, zacatecas stoneware, iron engobes & ash glazes,52 x 26 cm/ 20.5 x 10 inches,
AGEO - ARCHIVO GENERAL DEL ESTADO DE OAXACA, Septiembre 2024
Cristina Rodríguez's work arises from the observation of the environment and the investigation of vernacular materials in context. Her work is charged by the nomadic experience, a particularity that has motivated her to focus her production on aesthetic choices that speak to the places she has resided for periods of time. The artist articulates a vocabulary of gestures that she uses to compose objects of a diverse nature that invoke the genius loci of a territory.
The sculptures scattered throughout the General Archive of the State of Oaxaca (AGEO) – created using clay and later glazed with ash from the region’s oak trees – are directly related to the experience of traversing a field and walking it seeking something. Their final form implies a universal gesture that serves to understand the density of a material: the pinch. Through a repetitive and spiraling act, which leaves crevices and protuberances, the artist opens cells that follow one another to form what amounts to a shell. Their organic appearance and earthy colors allow them to blend in as an extension of the capricious living forms that surround them so that, as time passes, they become home to growths and colonies in their cavities.
Although their appearance evokes the tissues of other sentient species, even suggesting they are the shells of fictional beings, the works possess a deeply human nature as they require an opposable thumb for their creation. Their tendency toward roundness could be reminiscent of ancient vessels, but their characteristic porous texture makes them unsuitable for containing elements. These ambiguities allow them to present themselves to us as autonomous and singular objects that surprise us with their rarity and provoke a feeling of unearthing .
The artist has called this group of sculptures semillas (seeds). While the cycle of a plant begins the moment it is planted, many plant species develop the most ingenious mechanisms to spread their offspring. The idea of an errant seed that wanders and remains permeable and unstable serves to enrich an imaginative landscape of aesthetic and political possibilities, countering the rigidity and severity with which lives are managed.
Alan Sierra
