Northerners Don't Pray for Rain

I've recently been exploring the breeze block as an object that for me feels quintessential to Mexican architecture, a practical object that can create shade, allow partial visibility, and air flow to partially outdoor spaces. I have also noticed the breeze block as an object prevalent in Vancouver where its only use is to create a romantic notion of thoughtful design. Ideally suited for arid areas, the breeze block is out of place in Vancouver each rainfall weakens their already fragile forms. Exploring these forms as simply decorative motifs has led me to equate the block with textile, repeating in pattern as their motifs tie themselves together. Attempting to continue these logics of textile I have woven a knot of ropes that forms a new fixture, not a wall, not a cloth, but an experiment devoid of its purpose. I bend rebar towards a silhouette, ropes and concrete drape around a figure partially tied to its own iconographies. I cast breeze brocks fashioned to look like a section of a weaving, as they form walls cloth becomes undeniable.  It demands its existence as a hybrid and an absence, as a slipping form that is caught by its own rigidity, now just one rainfall away from dissolve.

I was recently on a drive in southern California, as we drove we read every billboard and road sign out loud “fresno 30 miles, speed enforced by radar, MAGA, Historic route 66, Elk” each entertaining us for a second. After a bit we saw this one sign in a field that read “Pray for rain”. At first after our initial reading we kind of laughed, in our Vancouver minds the idea of praying for rain was ridiculous. But after a moment we realised where we were, of course in a southern California desert farm people would need more rain. But that initial reaction from us, the absolute misunderstanding of what is a very simple want felt interesting to me. It was as if our own geographic realities made it impossible to understand the necessity of the place we are in. We had always prayed for sun. Our wants, our desires, our agencies were fundamentally misaligned with the place we were in and perhaps are not aligned with the geographic realities of the places I often reference. Being partially absent from Mexico I cannot truly know its inherent needs, I can’t feel the sun on my skin so I believe it's not warm. Perhaps my sensibilities must shift now. The land does not need more sun, yet I still pray for it. Perhaps, that is what my breeze blocks needed at times, but my prayers must now prioritise practical realities over romantic notions of authentic place if I hope to shift my perception. After all, northerners don't pray for rain.

Breeze Book

Enticed and Entangled en Algo Antiguo

Exploring concrete and bricks as a material of memory. As an architecture of recollection the gallery will is transformed into a site of understanding forged out of culturally familiar forms. The breeze block which is common in Mexican homes is restaged many times in this exhibition. Within the over 150 reclaimed blocks from Vancouver homes and the hand twisted rope walls that mimic the blocks motifs. The exhibition is an embodiment of my practice of “recordar” remembering my past and “re-acuerdar” re settling it. 

Re-acuerdar is to retwist and resettle the fibres of something. To assemble a recollection of knowledge and settle it, to twist into an agreement. To collect and organise, to force together. When I spot a fray in a thread I begin to twist it between my fingers until its fibres are reincorporated. As I bring together aesthetics of disparate things I twist them between my fingers until they agree, until their fibres are indistinguishable, until vine becomes fringe, until candy is bead, until concrete is textile.