{"@attributes":{"version":"2.0"},"channel":{"title":"Sof\u00eda C\u00f3rdova","link":"https:\/\/sofiacordova.com","description":"Sof\u00eda C\u00f3rdova","pubDate":"Mon, 10 Nov 2025 20:20:30 +0000","generator":"https:\/\/sofiacordova.com","language":"en","item":[{"title":"Home Page Slideshow","link":"https:\/\/sofiacordova.com\/Home-Page-Slideshow","pubDate":"Tue, 06 Dec 2022 21:15:31 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/sofiacordova.com\/Home-Page-Slideshow","description":" (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start': new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0], j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src= 'https:\/\/www.googletagmanager.com\/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f); })(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-PT8KH262'); \n\n\n window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];\n function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}\n gtag('js', new Date());\n\n gtag('config', 'UA-39405313-1');\n\n\n\tSOF\u00cdA V. C\u00d3RDOVA ROSADO\n\n\n\n\n\n"},{"title":"The Wreck and not the Story of the Wreck","link":"https:\/\/sofiacordova.com\/The-Wreck-and-not-the-Story-of-the-Wreck","pubDate":"Thu, 12 Sep 2024 18:17:47 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/sofiacordova.com\/The-Wreck-and-not-the-Story-of-the-Wreck","description":"The Wreck and not the Story of the Wreck JOAN, Los Angeles\nMay 11 - July 20, 2024\nExhibition text: JOAN presents The Wreck and not the Story of the Wreck, the first institutional solo exhibition in Los Angeles by Oakland- and Puerto Rico-based artist Sof\u00eda C\u00f3rdova features two video installations from the artist\u2019s GUILLOTIN\u00c6 WannaCry series, along with a newly commissioned installation with sculptural and text-based works. C\u00f3rdova makes work that looks to science fiction as alternative history and considers climate capitalism\u2019s deep entanglement with colonial erasure. The presentation at JOAN centers on her recent work on revolution\u2014both historical and imagined\u2014asking what are the gestational conditions necessary for collectively imagining and constructing a liberated future.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nGUILLOTIN\u00c6 WannaCry is set in the near future and owes its title to the 2017 ransomware attack and its aptitude in naming a spirit of malaise. The series conceives of revolution as a speculative and indeterminate process. Through absurdity and nonlinearity, each act makes a different proposition for finding new ways to revolt by moving away from an authorial voice, and unsettling the notion of progressive time by creating synesthetic relationships through color.\n\nThe first act, GUILLOTIN\u00c6 WannaCry: YELLOW: Break Room (2019-21), resists historical tellings of revolution as individual-led events and looks instead at the collective to better understand who and what constitute organizing. Through a multichannel video work and a color-coded environment of readymades and objects, the work calls forward a near future where various possible ruptures\u2014from global uprisings to the destabilization of governance and a series of climate-related events\u2014subvert systems worldwide. The characters engage in conversations with historical revolution through the use of artifacts and archives, such as documentary images and film, sound bites of speeches, and found photographs ranging from the Black Panthers, Sandinistas, Russian Revolution, and the 2019 protests in the Caribbean and Latin America. They also study smaller acts of revolution: meetings, gatherings, and protests, and negotiate their distinct positions by citing reality TV, revolutionary leaders, poets and theorists including Adrienne Rich and Frantz Fanon. As the dancers move from solo choreographies to an improvised ensemble dance, the work calls forward the urgency of collective action in the long arc of organizing revolutions big and small. As a group, the dancers explore dance music\u2019s liberatory dimensions as C\u00f3rdova\u2019s score moves from abrasive walls of sound to dance-inspired rhythms to sampled cut-ups of political speeches. Alongside the video, C\u00f3rdova creates an immersive installation, which includes ceramic sculptures that mirror the dreamlike set inside Break Room, and further complicate the divisions between the digital space and its physical reproduction.\n\nThe second act after Yellow, GUILLOTIN\u00c6 WannaCry, GREEN: Savage Sauvage Salvaje (2022), tells histories of organizing by African fugitive slaves (cimarrones) and Indigenous people within the forest and jungle across the Caribbean and the Americas. The work presents resistance to colonialism and capitalist-patriarchy\u2019s insistence on the intertwinement of the subaltern and natural resources in order to render them both exploitable. By confronting this position\u2019s violent applications, GREEN: Savage Sauvage Salvaje argues that this conflation supports the extractive practices which have resulted in the climate crisis and long ago, the dual inventions of class and race. Threading throughout the video are fragments of texts drawn from historical accounts, poetry by Derek Walcott, Alice Walker, and William Carlos Williams, contemporary voices from the zeitgeist\u2014reality TV, Internet, radio, and theory\u2014and original text. For this particular score, C\u00f3rdova (with collaborator Matthew Gonzalez Kirkland) makes reference to popular dance forms like reggaeton, bomba y plena, salsa, and free jazz to cement these forms of revolt as part of larger Black and Indigenous cultural processes. The video is presented within another color-coded setting with artifacts from filming locations, including leaves and lichens, 3D scans of seeds, and taxidermied birds. In its totality, the installation looks to multiple timelines, past and future, and approaches \u2018wilderness\u2019 as a collaborator in revolt and rejoicing.\n\nA publication featuring the script of both videos presented was published by JOAN\u2019s Autograph press and can be bought HERE.\n\n*All photos by Evan Walsh"},{"title":"GUILLOTIN\u00c6 WannaCry, Verde: Savage Sauvage Salvaje (LIVE)","link":"https:\/\/sofiacordova.com\/GUILLOTINA-WannaCry-Verde-Savage-Sauvage-Salvaje-LIVE","pubDate":"Mon, 10 Nov 2025 20:20:30 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/sofiacordova.com\/GUILLOTINA-WannaCry-Verde-Savage-Sauvage-Salvaje-LIVE","description":"GUILLOTIN\u00c6 WannaCry, Verde: Savage Sauvage Salvaje, en VIVO, Pi\u00f1ones, Puerto Rico. Comision de MAC (Museo de Arte Contemporan\u00e9o) en el Barrio \n2024\nPerformance + m\u00fasica \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n(fotos por Ricardo Alcaraz)\nBAILARINES\n\nALEYRAH PAG\u00c1N AM\u00c9ZQUITA Y SOF\u00cdA C\u00d3RDOVA, HOJA\n\nALEX M. VELILLA ROSARIO, PIEDRA\n\nPEL\u00c9 S\u00c1NCHEZ TORMES, SEMILLA\n\n\n\nM\u00daSICA\n\nMATT GONZ\u00c1LEZ KIRKLAND\n\nMARIELA SOLIS\n\nSOF\u00cdA C\u00d3RDOVA\n\n\n\nESCENOGRAF\u00cdA\n\nSOF\u00cdA C\u00d3RDOVA CON ESCULTURAS FABRICADAS POR JAVIER L\u00d3PEZ\n\n\n\nCAMISAS\n\nZAIDA GOVEO BALSAMEDAVIDEOGRAFIA\nJEANICE MUSTAFA LOPEZ\n\nCRISTOBAL GUERRA\n\nGIANFRANCO REBELLA DE ORDU\u00f1A (drone)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEsta comisi\u00f3n se realiza en el marco de la exhibici\u00f3n \u201cPuerto Rico Negrx,\u201d curada por Marina Reyes Franco y Mar\u00eda Elena Ortiz. La comisi\u00f3n cont\u00f3 con la coordinaci\u00f3n de Katia Cruz Quintana y apoyo de producci\u00f3n de la Unidad Audiovisual del MAC. \n\n\n\n\n\n"},{"title":"GUILLOTIN\u00c6 WannaCry, Green: Savage Sauvage Salvaje","link":"https:\/\/sofiacordova.com\/GUILLOTINA-WannaCry-Green-Savage-Sauvage-Salvaje","pubDate":"Tue, 11 Oct 2022 00:24:35 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/sofiacordova.com\/GUILLOTINA-WannaCry-Green-Savage-Sauvage-Salvaje","description":"GUILLOTIN\u00c6 WannaCry, Green: Savage Sauvage Salvaje\n2022\nVideo, color, black & white, original sound composition\n34:35\n\n \n \nThis work operates within multiple timelines, past and future, and approaches \u2018wilderness\u2019 as a collaborator in revolt. Drawing from histories of cimarrones and indigenous people sheltering and organizing from within forests across the Caribbean, the Americas, and ultimately, globally, this work combines first person historical accounts, poetry (Derek Walcott, Alice Walker, William Carlos Williams among others), contemporary voices from the zeitgeist (TV, Internet, radio, theory), and original text in a minimally intervened-upon landscape.\n\nThis work was commissioned by Tufts University Galleries and shown in the exhibition Backed Up Into Dawn (2022) and was re-worked as a live performance for the Museo Contemporaneo de Puerto Rico (2024)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPerformances + Voice Acting (in order of appearance) : \nYagrumo\/Guanina\/1.Sof\u00eda C\u00f3rdova \nK\u00e1rstica\/ Padre Piedrahita\/ 2.: Rashaun Mitchell\nAcerola\/ X\/ : 3.Meg Jala\nNarrator: Imani Mason Jordan\nDirector of Photography: Sof\u00eda C\u00f3rdova, Matthew Gonzalez Kirkland\nMusical Composition: Sof\u00eda C\u00f3rdova + Matthew Gonzalez Kirkland (XUXA SANTAMARIA)\n\t(with samples from Love, La Lupe, Ismael Rivera)\nAudio Mixing and Mastering: Matthew Gonzalez Kirkland\nSpecial Field Assistance: Tim FurstnauDirector: Sof\u00eda C\u00f3rdova\n "},{"title":"Backed Up Into Dawn","link":"https:\/\/sofiacordova.com\/Backed-Up-Into-Dawn","pubDate":"Tue, 11 Oct 2022 00:24:40 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/sofiacordova.com\/Backed-Up-Into-Dawn","description":"Backed Up Into Dawn\nExhibition featuring GUILLOTIN\u00c6 WannaCry, Act Green: Savage Sauvage Salvaje set within an installation environment composed of taxidermy, photographs and other sculpture (details below), \nSIN AGUA, and dawn_chorusi: LA PREKUELA \nTufts University Galleries (School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts)\n2022\n\n\nThis exhibition featured an interview with scholar Lorgia Garc\u00eda Pe\u00f1a which you can view and download here. \n\nFrom exhibition text: Puerto Rican-born, Oakland-based conceptual interdisciplinary artist Sof\u00eda C\u00f3rdova works with performance, music, video, photography, sculpture, and installation. Her expansive practice addresses how race, gender, class and borders lived under late capitalism present tools to mobilize as well as barriers against radical imaginings of a collective and liberatory future. This gallery presents the commissioned installation GUILLOTIN\u00c6WannaCry Act Green: Sauvage, Savage, Salvaje, part of a larger series of video and performance works with original electronic music scores, set within color-coded installation environments. Each act takes place in a near-future, where the work of making revolution is contextualized within global uprisings, the destabilization of governance, and climate-related events that scramble technological systems worldwide. \n\nScripted and filmed in the summer of 2022, Act Green: Sauvage, Savage, Salvaje works with \u201cwilderness\u201d as collaborator, along with dancers Rashaun Miller and Meg Jala, for an installation and film that builds upon histories of Cimarr\u00f3nes and Indigenous people organizing in fugitivity across the Caribbean and the Americas and draws upon scholars, writers and musicians such as Alice Walker, Cedric Robinson, Denise Ferreira da Silva, La Lupe, and Combahee River Collective. This immersive environment of speculative climate devastation includes real and fabricated elements, including artifacts from the environment where the video was filmed, 3-d scans of seeds, leaves and rocks made into oversized sculpture, taxidermied birds mutated into green in response to the ravages of human activity on our planet, and performers enacting banal exchanges of touch in order to be together. Utilizing the entangled relationship of poetry, weaponized technology, and political agency, Sauvage, Savage, Salvaje invites us to witness and imagine a vision of our world\u2019s present-future. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWorks above: \nA Touch Could Be The Spark, How Will I Recognize You? ( Leg-up + Letter ) 2022\nInkjet prints on dyed panel\nimage size: 45 x 68 \u201c\n\nA Cast of Thousands (Yagrumo Leaf) - in background\n2022\n3D Scan, 3D print (thermoplaster polyester), resin, construction meshing, zip ties, paper, birch tree, fiber-reactive dye, rock tripe lichen dye , LED light, laser-cut metal screen \n\nA Cast of Thousands (Quartz) \n2022\n3D Scan, resin, LED light, laser-cut metal screen \n\nGUILLOTIN\u00c6 WannaCry: Act Green: Savage, Sauvage, Salvaje\n2022\nVideo, color, black & white, original sound composition\n34:35\n\nGreen is A Solace, A Promise of Peace (where small birds hide and dodge and lift their plaintive rallying cries)\n2022\nTaxidermied birds (Doves, parakeets, canaries) hair dye, brass, birch wood\n\n\nSofi\u0301a Co\u0301rdova\u2019s moving image works consider the merging of science fiction and reality alongside climate change and migration, the erasure of Indigenous knowledge, and corporate land extraction. On view in this gallery are SIN AGUA i: expectation crowned by its own desire (2017); SIN AGUA ii: subtle suffering (2017-2022), and SIN AGUA iii: where thieves go after death (2017-2022), a series of fragmented, impressionistic video-essays with a score composed from field recordings that range from Indigenous flute melodies, car alarms, wind, bird songs and conversations along the artists travels through the desert. \n\nIn the back gallery is dawn_chorus i: LAPREKUELA (2016\u201321). Shot in the woods of Western Finland, the deserts of New Mexico, and the Driftless Region of southwestern Wisconsin, this series is in conversation with the poetry of Julia de Burgos, the Kalevala, Ursula K. LeGuin\u2019s Tehanu, and Clarice Lispector's Agua viva, and presents a possible history of our planet in the next 500 years through the lens of a failed cyborgian cult. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSIN AGUA i. expectation crowned by its own desire,\n2017\nVideo, color, original sound composition\n16:07\n\nSIN AGUA ii. subtle suffering\n2017-2022\nVideo, color, original sound composition\n19:04\n\nSIN AGUA iii. where thieves go after death\n2017-2022\nVideo, color, original sound composition\n22:34\n\n\n\ndawn_chorusi:LA PREKUELA\n2016-2021\nvideo, color, original sound composition\n45:00"},{"title":"GUILLOTIN\u00c6 WannaCry, Yellow: Break Room ","link":"https:\/\/sofiacordova.com\/GUILLOTINA-WannaCry-Yellow-Break-Room","pubDate":"Tue, 19 Jan 2021 03:00:49 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/sofiacordova.com\/GUILLOTINA-WannaCry-Yellow-Break-Room","description":"GUILLOTIN\u00c6 WannaCry, Yellow: Break Room \n3 channel video, color, original sound composition \n2019-2021\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWhat are relationships? \nMeetings, gatherings, protests, secret cell, reading group\nChanged by conditions, physical touch \nUprisings organized, announced by a psychic at the bottom of a ship\nthen and then and now\ngroups\/ continuums \nArrests, improvised communities, shots fired\n\nLack of clarity \nword over word\nwound over wound\ntalking over one another\nBut we have! to.\n\n\n\n\nDancers: \nStephanie Hewett\nalex cruse \nKevin Lo\nSof\u00eda C\u00f3rdova\n\nWe dance\/wrestle with historical revolution, antagonist\/protagonist. An imagining of revolution too. Feeling around to create space for a shared new set of ______, to work on what a present- future of revolt(s) and fire might feel like. The rest and planting after too. Not to\/for\/from me but to \/for\/from all. \n\nFamous faces or faces that need protection get blurred, gestures remain. There is no great man, there is no leader. There are meetings, long and sometimes boring and important. Sometimes it is quick.\n\nHuey P Newton shows us his copy of Venceremos!\n\nChoreography becomes clunky as we move around our individual importance towards one anothers'. We are working out how to do and feel it in our heavily burdened bodies. Distinct positions, reality TV, Rich and Fanon and dudes on YouTube.\n\nIt might be obtuse but I hope we meet. "},{"title":"\u00bfY X K (TU CREES QUE YO HABLO ESPA\u00d1OL) ?","link":"https:\/\/sofiacordova.com\/Y-X-K-TU-CREES-QUE-YO-HABLO-ESPANOL","pubDate":"Wed, 24 Nov 2021 23:07:09 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/sofiacordova.com\/Y-X-K-TU-CREES-QUE-YO-HABLO-ESPANOL","description":"\u00bfY X K (TU CREES QUE YO HABLO ESPA\u00d1OL) ?\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n3 movimientos: i. palma y pl\u00e1tano ii. ca\u00f1a de az\u00facar iii. sangre y tabaco& Y (Do You Think I Speak Spanish)? 3 Movements: i. Palm And Plantain ii. Blood And Tobacco iii. Sugar Cane\nPerformance, 3-channel video, original sound composition\n2017\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n3 actions in locations with direct ties to the botanical protagonists of the Columbian Exchange in the port city of M\u00e1laga, Spain.The movement- an uprooting- took cues from syncretic ritual and popular dances in the Caribbean -from Bomba y Plena to Salsa to Reggaeton. [and its continued consumption throughout the globalized world.]This video installation is accompanied by an experimental score foregrounding the ebb and flow of music from Spain to the Caribbean and back via the flow of human bodies, both free and enslaved.\nFrom Puerto Rico Negrx (exhibition wherein this work debuted in 2023) curators Mar\u00eda Elena Ortiz y Marina Reyes Franco: La pieza \u00bfY X K (tu crees que yo hablo espa\u00f1ol)? contempla la explotaci\u00f3n inherente en la historia agr\u00edcola y mercantil entre el Caribe y Espa\u00f1a. Filmada en tres lugares con v\u00ednculos a la colonizaci\u00f3n de las Am\u00e9ricas en la ciudad de M\u00e1laga, las secciones de la obra hacen referencia a la cosecha de monocultivos y legados de la esclavitud. C\u00f3rdova se inspira en movimientos pol\u00edticos y elementos de las vidas negras, tales como rituales sincr\u00e9ticos y m\u00fasica afrocaribe\u00f1a, para comentar sobre el consumo globalizado de esta m\u00fasica. La canci\u00f3n \"Guajira\u201d [aqu\u00ed cantada por la cantaora Lourdes G\u00e1lvez del Postigo] que cierra la obra, se origina en la tradici\u00f3n de Los Cantes del Piyayo, que fusiona el flamenco con influencias caribe\u00f1as a partir de 1898. En respuesta, C\u00f3rdova crea su propio remix de la canci\u00f3n , incorporando extractos alterados de m\u00fasica de bomba, plena, y producci\u00f3n cl\u00e1sica de reguet\u00f3n de los a\u00f1os 90.\nThe piece \u00bfY X K (tu crees que yo hablo espa\u00f1ol)? contemplates the exploitation inherent in the agricultural and commercial history between the Caribbean and Spain. Filmed in three locations with links to the colonization of the Americas in the city of Malaga, sections of the work reference the harvest of monocultures and the legacy of slavery. C\u00f3rdova draws inspiration from political movements and elements of Black life, such as syncretic rituals and Afrocaribbean music, to comment on the globalized consumption of this music. The song \"Guajira,\" [here sung by flamenco singer Lourdes G\u00e1lvez del Postigo] which closes the work, originates in the tradition of Los Cantes del Piyayo, which fused flamenco with Caribbean influences beginning in 1898. In response, C\u00f3rdova creates her own remix of the song, incorporating altered elements of bomba music, plena, and classic reggaeton production from the 90s.\n"},{"title":"If No Clouds, Then Stars, and Then the Cosmos","link":"https:\/\/sofiacordova.com\/If-No-Clouds-Then-Stars-and-Then-the-Cosmos","pubDate":"Wed, 17 May 2023 19:52:32 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/sofiacordova.com\/If-No-Clouds-Then-Stars-and-Then-the-Cosmos","description":"If No Clouds, Then Stars, and Then the Cosmosin-progress\n\nVideo, 35mm photographs, found photography, ceramic, thermoplaster polyester\n14:47\nIf No Clouds, Then Stars, and Then the Cosmos is a body of work that is part of a larger, in-progress serial project mapping California\u2019s history using the valleys of the state and their pasts as ancient sea beds. If No Clouds, focuses on San Jos\u00e9 and accesses its history through the archives at the Martin Luther King Jr. Library at San Jose State University. Prioritizing often-ignored narratives -- those whose lives are negatively marked by the brutal inventions of  race, gender and class -- the research begins to meld with speculative narratives drawn from the materials themselves. This work takes the form of a sort of alien ghost story and traces an unlikely line between forms of indigenous time-telling in the valley through the use of the stars and planets, LGBTQIA+ resistance in the Santa Clara Valley as expressed through ideologically opposite groups like  High Tech Gays and the Bill de Frank LGBTQ Community Center, protests at the school and its environs in the second half of the 20th century, the role of Christianity in the town in its forms both colonial and as ally in the fight for socialism, Japanese internment, early environmental movements, and technology (from agriculture to the microchip) as a dominant force in shaping the geography and history of San Jos\u00e9. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"},{"title":"In My Mouth the Words Are Melting","link":"https:\/\/sofiacordova.com\/In-My-Mouth-the-Words-Are-Melting","pubDate":"Thu, 31 Aug 2023 22:13:12 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/sofiacordova.com\/In-My-Mouth-the-Words-Are-Melting","description":"In My Mouth the Words Are Melting\nBuffalo Institute of Contemporary Art\n\nFrom the Curators: In my Mouth the Words are Melting is the first presentation of all three works from artist Sof\u00eda C\u00f3rdova\u2019s dawn chorus trilogy, an epic series of videos and installations. The dawn_chorus trilogy reconsiders the past\u2019s revolutionary potential; scrutinizes capitalism\u2019s historic depredations against the Global South and their present day climatic blowback; and explores the promises and failures of technology and ritual in a post-apocalyptic world. Sof\u00eda C\u00f3rdova is a Puerto Rican-born, California-based interdisciplinary artist who regularly makes work with performance, music, video, photography, sculpture, and installation. Drawing from literature and poetry to pop culture and music, C\u00f3rdova conveys a plurality of lived experiences in her works that help to guide us as we face a changing relationship to our planet.\n\nMoving from a fantastical history of our planet 500 years in the future in dawn_chorus i: LAPREKUELA (2016\u20132021), to a personal narrative of Puerto Rico\u2019s recent past in dawn_chorus ii: el ni\u00e1gara en bicicleta, to the array of refugee experiences in contemporary California in dawn_chorus iii: the fruit they don\u2019t have here, the disparate stories are connected through repeating imagery of birds, the presence of fruit and flora, and C\u00f3rdova\u2019s own brand of magical realism. The trilogy is a docu-fantastical synthesis of stories that weave together issues of climate change, systemic violence, capitalism, technology, colonialism, and migration. In addition, C\u00f3rdova\u2019s installation includes costumes, sculptures, paintings produced by project participants, and sets related to each work from the trilogy.\n\nThis exhibition is part of BICA\u2019s 2022-23 exhibition series: Recovering Futures.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"},{"title":"SIN AGUA","link":"https:\/\/sofiacordova.com\/SIN-AGUA","pubDate":"Tue, 04 Oct 2022 21:44:13 +0000","guid":"https:\/\/sofiacordova.com\/SIN-AGUA","description":"\nSIN AGUA i. expectation crowned by its own desire,\n 2017\nVideo, color, original sound composition\n16:07\n\nSIN AGUA ii. subtle suffering\n2017-2022\nVideo, color, original sound composition\n19:04\n\nSIN AGUA iii. where thieves go after death\n2017-2022\nVideo, color, original sound composition\n22:34\n\n\n\nA hunt for water across\nTime, ways of surviving here.\na first encounter, \nalbino snakes, \nradioactive wildlife, \nalien cave painting, \nrebellion, \nWater,\nand bloodshed \na hurricane, a madness\na true fiction for & about a desert at the edge of time's end\n\n\n\n\n\nSIN AGUA is an anti-documentary trilogy and installation of my experiences in Arizona, a journey which has its initial origins in my physical discomfort within the landscape of the southwest (as a person raised among oceans and rainforests). Beginning with questions as to how water got to the valley and how settlers and colonists corrupted these systems, the work spends time with the ancient native peoples of the region (O\u2019odham and Sinagua), their dwellings and engineering works to weave out from there a narrative built on research, experiences both on the field as well as encounters had when visiting key sites. All of this becomes transformed when Hurricane Maria hits Puerto Rico bringing in a personal narrative about lost and struggling relatives and ecological disaster all weaving into a work contending in past and present with colonial erasure. This piece is narrated in my native Spanish and learned English, looping back and forth between research, digressions and (at times unreliable) personal narrative.\n\nThe work traipses through the homelands of Indigenous peoples, strange new intentional communities such as Arco Santi and Biosphere 2, ancient ruins, the desolate landscapes of downtown Phoenix imagined as ruins, air conditioning, burning sidewalks, the Saguaro\u2019s resilience in the face of drought and nuclear testing, family trauma (in the form of phone conversations and texts), Puerto Rico\u2019s wholesale destruction at the hands of Hurricane Maria and its aftermath, collections and archives and their guardians, tourist sites and the pilgrims and gawkers who visit them, petroglyphs and plastic bags from the Circle K and Safeway, Skype interviews with Zuni archaeologists alongside text messages and movies watched on YouTube, a dance performance at the edge of the Coconino desert, and everywhere - in fountains, leaking hoses, rivers, pools - the presence (or absence) of water. These far-ranging elements, accompanied by narration and original musical score sampling the landscape, flutes and car alarms, slowly coalesce into an abstracted narrative, a story of repetition, history forever looping onto itself.\n\nThis work was produced at Arizona State University as part of a residency at the ASU Museum.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"}]}}