Chickenism, 2012
The other side of eggism
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This body of work explores the gap between art and life. I walk the paths of immigrants from Mexico to the USA, collecting objects that have been left behind. The process of re-collecting clothes, letters, gun cartridges, water bottles, etc., causes me to empathize with human experiences with human drama as much as I can possibly identify with. These objects are analogous to people. The objects I collect are not the art. The anthropological investigation and the documentation are the art; as well as deciding which objects to collect and which objects to leave there. Sometimes I take videos or photographs to create memories of those objects, which I choose not to take with me in their physical form. Other times I re-claim the object from the site where it has been left. I see this collecting as an appropriation of the world and what is going on culturally. These objects are historical references, records of being present today, here. They represent the time I live in and what I encounter as a living person. I see documentation as a process attempting to give an answer to who we are as people. The final and most important step in this process of re-collection is the choice made by the viewer about what to archive in his own experiences as a human who encounter these objects.
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Identity is connected to a place. The house where I grow up and the one that I call home are both part of my personal identity. On one side this piece show the number 564, the number of the house where I was born and raised in Mexico. The other side shows the number 10120, the number of the house I currently live in the USA.
The medium of the artwork is part of the dialogue. For example, the use of a scatological material such as chicken manure which signifies the plurality of experiences which take place in one’s home. The barbed wire, the light, the numbers –every single thing is placed in the Chicken coop to promote observation and thinking.
This piece reflects on housing issues such as foreclosure as much as it does on the meaning of migration. American “good life” is not available to everyone. Suburbia houses are very similar to one another. In the USA the houses are made of wood and most of them have gable roofs, similar to the one in this work. Suburbia houses are signifiers of American culture. Paradoxically, most of the construction workers that build those houses are Mexican immigrants.
I hired a Mexican immigrant called Alex from a local Home Depot to wire this Chicken Coop from the inside with barbed wire. The inside wiring is a metaphor for borders. On the other hand, the invisibility of Alex’s labor is to plays with presence and absence. What is here? What is not here? What is inside? What is outside?
The medium of the artwork is part of the dialogue. For example, the use of a scatological material such as chicken manure which signifies the plurality of experiences which take place in one’s home. The barbed wire, the light, the numbers –every single thing is placed in the Chicken coop to promote observation and thinking.
This piece reflects on housing issues such as foreclosure as much as it does on the meaning of migration. American “good life” is not available to everyone. Suburbia houses are very similar to one another. In the USA the houses are made of wood and most of them have gable roofs, similar to the one in this work. Suburbia houses are signifiers of American culture. Paradoxically, most of the construction workers that build those houses are Mexican immigrants.
I hired a Mexican immigrant called Alex from a local Home Depot to wire this Chicken Coop from the inside with barbed wire. The inside wiring is a metaphor for borders. On the other hand, the invisibility of Alex’s labor is to plays with presence and absence. What is here? What is not here? What is inside? What is outside?
