exhibition the cyborgs undone

the cyborgs undone,

the ghosts came to light,

the ancestors control the future

solo exhibition

Chicago Artists Coalition, Chicago, IL

"We are not concerned," he said, "with long-winded creations, with long-term beings. Our creatures will not be heroes of romances in many volumes. Their roles will be short, concise; their characters-without a background. Sometimes for one gesture, for one word alone, we shall make the effort to bring them to life. We openly admit: we shall not insist either on durability or solidity of workmanship; our creations will be temporary, to serve for a single occasion. If they be human beings, we shall give them, for example, only one profile, one hand, one leg, the one limb needed

Matter has been given infinite fertility, inexhaustible vitality and, at the same time, a seductive power of temptation which invites us to create as well. In the depth of matter, indistinct smiles are shaped, tensions build up, attempts at form appear. The whole of matter pulsates with infinite possibilities which send dull shivers through it. Waiting for the life-giving breath of the spirit, it is endlessly in motion. It entices us with a thousand sweet, soft, round shapes which it blindly dreams up within itself.

Bruno Schulz, The Street of Crocodiles

for their role. It would be pedantic to bother about the other, unnecessary, leg. Their backs can be made of canvas or simply whitewashed. We shall have this proud slogan as our aim: a different actor for every gesture. For each action, each word, we shall call to life a different human being. Such is our whim, and the world will be run according to our pleasure. Demiurge was in love with consummate, superb and complicated materials; we shall give priority to trash. We are simply entranced and enchanted by the cheapness, shabbiness and inferiority of material."

"Matter is the most passive and most defenceless essence in cosmos. Anyone can mould it and shape it; it obeys everybody. All attempts at organising matter are transient and temporary, easy to reverse and to dissolve. There is no evil in reducing life to other and newer forms. Homicide is not a sin. It

is sometimes a necessary violence on resistant and ossified forms of existence which have ceased to be amusing. In the interests of an important and fascinating experiment, it can even become meritorious. [...]"

i am fascinated with Schulz's ability to dream up reality. the tailors' dummies, the dolls, are silent, unreciprocated vessels for a desire for intimacy as they are not humans and not things (this

is according to Rilke's definition of things where a thing is either an art piece or an object one lives with and uses.) they are strange forms and yet are mirrors of identity.

everything is birthed and everything dyes. time is a mirage – unattainable but yet passionately desired. time is embedded in material. it is cut into billions of slices and rapidly devoured by many – people, animals, plants, stars, galaxies. paradoxically as it sounds, such processes as leaving behind, passing, spending,

forgetting, are generative. nature attains to this by the perpetual recycle of the dead into the abundance of forms, colors and textures. this is how i, in the world of used up, outmoded, desperate and discarded material, am alive. i refuse to believe in my own end.

what is in the texture of such materials as beeswax, burlap, leather, steel, plaster, wood, paper? the millennia of strata of memories, myths, dreams and poetry. but also the everyday. once, i was shown a piece of beeswax the size of a small rock that fit nicely into my palm. it served to condition thread: the wax coats the thread, making it stronger, reducing tangling and fraying, and allowing it to pass through fabric more smoothly, especially during hand sewing or quilting. this piece of wax has been passing from one generation of sewers to another and its smooth texture came from

many working hands that held it. it had narrow intersecting grooves on its surface from passing the thread and depressions from fingers. its color was of a dusty dull amber and i could'd shake the feeling that something, like a small insect, might have been sealed forever inside of it, that this wax was a preservation chamber to be fossilizes and rediscovered in millennia. it is this transcendence of wax from its utility to the imagined and its ability to hold memory in its texture that forever attracts me.

all photographs by Lillian Heredia