1 00:00:15,834 --> 00:00:20,054 (hammering) 2 00:00:21,997 --> 00:00:23,890 ABRAHAM CRUZVILLEGAS: I went to the streets in Paris 3 00:00:23,890 --> 00:00:26,599 looking for materials from demolitions. 4 00:00:29,279 --> 00:00:34,444 I was very interested in Antonin Artaud, the French poet, since I was a teenager. 5 00:00:37,482 --> 00:00:40,450 (materials clattering) 6 00:00:40,450 --> 00:00:45,210 for this project in Paris, I decided to approach him again. 7 00:00:45,210 --> 00:00:50,620 I like that he constantly looks for a transformation of language. 8 00:00:52,117 --> 00:00:59,640 This is Artaud's map of Paris, and I made some lines for describing possible 9 00:00:59,640 --> 00:01:00,640 paths 10 00:01:00,640 --> 00:01:05,320 between points, points that represent the mind of Artaud. 11 00:01:13,987 --> 00:01:16,869 For this exhibition, I went to the streets of Paris, 12 00:01:16,869 --> 00:01:20,200 and then I used Artaud's map of Paris 13 00:01:20,200 --> 00:01:22,439 to make sculptures in the spots where he used to go 14 00:01:22,439 --> 00:01:24,721 to visit friends or to have a drink. 15 00:01:25,816 --> 00:01:29,439 And I made sculptures in the place with the materials from the place, 16 00:01:29,439 --> 00:01:32,270 and I left the sculpture in the place. 17 00:01:32,784 --> 00:01:38,082 There should be no image of the work I made, and there is only an image of the place where 18 00:01:38,082 --> 00:01:39,252 I made it. 19 00:01:40,280 --> 00:01:46,519 It was a big experiment for me, in a way, trying to destroy my own way of making works. 20 00:01:46,519 --> 00:01:49,050 (hammering) 21 00:01:54,813 --> 00:02:01,670 In this project, I tried to make the references and the links to Artaud but not in a didactic way. 22 00:02:02,447 --> 00:02:07,350 This big piece that I made with wood, I would call it a necklace, but it's not, 23 00:02:07,350 --> 00:02:08,645 of course. 24 00:02:09,896 --> 00:02:15,939 At the beginning, I think it will look like somebody forgot to finish the work, 25 00:02:16,698 --> 00:02:21,698 until maybe you discover that there is something that joins everything together. 26 00:02:24,000 --> 00:02:26,580 There is another work that I did, a video. 27 00:02:26,580 --> 00:02:31,750 I made it in 2008 here is Paris, and that was the moment when we left Paris. 28 00:02:31,750 --> 00:02:34,440 We lived here three years and a half. 29 00:02:34,440 --> 00:02:35,610 It's myself running. 30 00:02:36,213 --> 00:02:39,968 Living here but not really being from here and then escaping from here 31 00:02:39,968 --> 00:02:42,376 but, in fact, running from myself. 32 00:02:46,598 --> 00:02:54,030 The very origin of autoconstrucción as a concept is related to people making their houses as 33 00:02:54,030 --> 00:02:55,030 they can. 34 00:02:55,030 --> 00:03:00,520 It's not a method or technique or style, 35 00:03:00,520 --> 00:03:04,709 but it's more like about the social circumstance and the political circumstance. 36 00:03:04,709 --> 00:03:09,643 People have no money to buy an apartment or a house at once. 37 00:03:10,849 --> 00:03:18,580 My father came to this land in the mid-'60s after an invitation of one of his relatives. 38 00:03:18,580 --> 00:03:21,930 One of his cousins told him, "There is this land there. 39 00:03:21,930 --> 00:03:25,330 Nobody's using it because it's so harsh." 40 00:03:25,330 --> 00:03:31,855 And his cousin sold him a piece of land, and even when it was not for sale. 41 00:03:31,855 --> 00:03:36,436 There was nothing but rocks, so he started something out of nothing. 42 00:03:38,267 --> 00:03:40,730 With the community, they started helping each other 43 00:03:40,730 --> 00:03:42,520 to construct their houses, and, of course, 44 00:03:42,520 --> 00:03:46,550 they had no idea of architecture or construction even. 45 00:03:46,550 --> 00:03:49,821 They were just improvising with the materials they found. 46 00:03:50,670 --> 00:03:52,453 This was a big patio. 47 00:03:52,453 --> 00:03:53,630 There was a kitchen there. 48 00:03:53,630 --> 00:03:56,950 There was the bedrooms over there, and then the entrance. 49 00:03:56,950 --> 00:03:59,391 There was a fence, a wooden fence. 50 00:03:59,860 --> 00:04:01,280 There was no proper street. 51 00:04:01,280 --> 00:04:05,331 It was only loosened earth or rocks. 52 00:04:15,780 --> 00:04:16,829 The exhibition at the Walker 53 00:04:16,829 --> 00:04:18,810 is not conceived as a retrospective. 54 00:04:18,810 --> 00:04:23,453 It's more like a selection of works that are related to this idea of autoconstrucción. 55 00:04:24,615 --> 00:04:28,240 They have in common, I think, the will of learning, 56 00:04:28,240 --> 00:04:30,590 and I think it's been always there in my work, 57 00:04:31,014 --> 00:04:33,600 this necessity of understanding. 58 00:04:40,726 --> 00:04:44,510 Understanding or dealing with the concept autoconstrucción, 59 00:04:44,510 --> 00:04:47,548 it's also hard in Spanish, I would say. 60 00:04:54,271 --> 00:05:00,260 This is a work I call autoconstrucción: the resource room in which there is references, 61 00:05:00,260 --> 00:05:05,220 like the history of Mexico, immigration to the city. 62 00:05:06,560 --> 00:05:08,761 It's a sculpture that is growing. 63 00:05:08,761 --> 00:05:10,465 It's alive when people use it. 64 00:05:14,441 --> 00:05:19,119 There's lots of pictures of my neighborhood from family archives. 65 00:05:19,990 --> 00:05:22,470 There is also some silk screens that I made. 66 00:05:22,470 --> 00:05:26,190 They are copies of original pamphlets and fliers and posters 67 00:05:26,190 --> 00:05:31,093 from political movements in Latin America from 1968 to now. 68 00:05:32,880 --> 00:05:36,208 I like that it's more like a didactic device. 69 00:05:37,079 --> 00:05:42,663 People can understand more about the context of my autoconstrucción concept, 70 00:05:43,266 --> 00:05:48,080 things that are not necessarily related to autoconstrucción, 71 00:05:48,080 --> 00:05:51,720 but in my mind, they were important for me 72 00:05:51,720 --> 00:05:55,938 in my education and my configuration of the concept of autoconstrucción. 73 00:06:04,203 --> 00:06:05,239 (dog barking) 74 00:06:07,115 --> 00:06:08,030 (dog barking) 75 00:06:08,935 --> 00:06:14,819 (pair conversing in foreign language) 76 00:06:14,819 --> 00:06:17,310 My mother is the daughter of indigenous people. 77 00:06:17,310 --> 00:06:21,190 They lived in a very poor environment near Tacubaya in Mexico city, 78 00:06:21,190 --> 00:06:25,436 so it was not new for her facing problems, but it was worse. 79 00:06:26,468 --> 00:06:28,323 It was really a process 80 00:06:28,323 --> 00:06:33,137 of constructing our history 81 00:06:33,137 --> 00:06:34,217 together with others. 82 00:06:34,217 --> 00:06:35,901 It wasn't just about us. 83 00:06:35,901 --> 00:06:38,635 Here I earned what it is to be fraternal and to act in solidarity 84 00:06:38,635 --> 00:06:41,134 with these people, with this neighborhood. 85 00:06:42,060 --> 00:06:45,900 She had to transform herself, voluntarily or not. 86 00:06:46,634 --> 00:06:51,580 And then she became an activist, and then she became a stronger woman 87 00:06:51,580 --> 00:06:57,388 and a great example for all of us, not only my family, but the neighbors as well. 88 00:06:57,388 --> 00:07:00,430 With other women, they became organizers of the people, 89 00:07:00,430 --> 00:07:05,459 demanding the services, like asking for water or sewage or electricity, 90 00:07:05,459 --> 00:07:09,229 and as a child, I witnessed this transformation. 91 00:07:09,334 --> 00:07:12,344 So the house, for me, is important because of that. 92 00:07:12,440 --> 00:07:15,240 It's not only the formal appearance 93 00:07:15,240 --> 00:07:19,310 or the shapes it took in time according to specific needs 94 00:07:19,310 --> 00:07:24,413 but also according to the transformation of an ideology. 95 00:07:26,625 --> 00:07:30,440 This work is composed by a couple of videos. 96 00:07:30,440 --> 00:07:36,080 I made interviews with my parents separately so they could give their own tale 97 00:07:36,080 --> 00:07:38,060 about the construction of the house. 98 00:07:38,395 --> 00:07:42,397 They had contradictory perceptions of reality. 99 00:07:43,223 --> 00:07:48,839 When I was a child, that was my perception of being in between these two noisy things. 100 00:07:49,554 --> 00:07:55,276 (overlapping speech in foreign language) 101 00:07:55,276 --> 00:07:57,724 My father, he's dead now. 102 00:07:57,724 --> 00:08:02,387 I think his perception of reality was pragmatic in many ways, looking at the 103 00:08:02,387 --> 00:08:03,387 landscape 104 00:08:03,387 --> 00:08:07,818 and describing the plants and the rocks as something nice, 105 00:08:07,818 --> 00:08:10,527 and I think I identify myself with him. 106 00:08:10,951 --> 00:08:14,620 I look at things very much like him. 107 00:08:14,620 --> 00:08:18,560 And my mother is more about the struggle, the fight, 108 00:08:18,828 --> 00:08:21,628 the corruption of the government, poverty. 109 00:08:21,740 --> 00:08:26,430 (overlapping speech in foreign language) 110 00:08:26,430 --> 00:08:29,340 I grew up with this kind of contradictory version 111 00:08:29,340 --> 00:08:32,240 of reality, and I like that very much, 112 00:08:32,240 --> 00:08:38,080 and I accept the contradiction as myself, as part of my identity, and I've been thinking 113 00:08:38,080 --> 00:08:39,080 more and more 114 00:08:39,080 --> 00:08:46,330 about this as an element of my work as well, that I'm composed with contradictory and unstable 115 00:08:46,330 --> 00:08:47,630 elements. 116 00:08:48,635 --> 00:08:56,910 This space, we call it El Taller, because my father used to paint here 117 00:08:56,910 --> 00:09:05,520 and to read and to listen to music, and even when he stopped making paintings 118 00:09:05,520 --> 00:09:06,520 and sculptures, 119 00:09:06,520 --> 00:09:08,568 we kept calling it El Taller. 120 00:09:08,568 --> 00:09:11,359 So in a way, it was the heart of the house. 121 00:09:11,828 --> 00:09:14,710 He lived with the Franciscan people. 122 00:09:14,710 --> 00:09:18,999 He went there, not an orphan, but as the son of a single mother. 123 00:09:18,999 --> 00:09:22,740 And then my grandmother took him as a child there. 124 00:09:22,740 --> 00:09:28,120 He took the habits of the monk, and he learned to play many instruments and 125 00:09:28,120 --> 00:09:29,140 to paint, 126 00:09:29,140 --> 00:09:32,610 and all the things he knew, he learned it with the Franciscan people. 127 00:09:32,610 --> 00:09:36,550 I grew up as a Catholic, but I'm not anymore. 128 00:09:36,550 --> 00:09:45,842 But I understand, I think I understood this essence of Christianism in love. 129 00:09:46,691 --> 00:09:53,868 He loved religion like he loved God and the presence of God in everything. 130 00:09:53,868 --> 00:09:58,340 And I think that's why I also took this sort of animism in my work. 131 00:09:58,340 --> 00:10:02,890 I associate it with other ways of thinking, like Taoism. 132 00:10:03,091 --> 00:10:09,930 I think he had some reasons to leave the order, but he loved, he loves, I mean I think, wherever 133 00:10:09,930 --> 00:10:10,940 he is, 134 00:10:10,940 --> 00:10:15,964 he loves Francisco and the life he had. 135 00:10:16,411 --> 00:10:20,269 My mother keeps some of the objects my father did. 136 00:10:20,269 --> 00:10:22,120 He was more like a commercial painter. 137 00:10:22,120 --> 00:10:26,600 He made like hundreds of these paintings, very similar, if not the same. 138 00:10:26,600 --> 00:10:32,610 He wasn't really trying to follow any trend or style or anything but more like to produce 139 00:10:32,610 --> 00:10:33,610 objects 140 00:10:33,610 --> 00:10:35,880 to sell to get an income. 141 00:10:35,880 --> 00:10:40,100 On that wall there is a portrait of my mother in the '60s. 142 00:10:40,100 --> 00:10:44,089 I think they have the same shape, the mushrooms and the hairdo. 143 00:10:44,089 --> 00:10:45,109 (chuckles) 144 00:10:51,095 --> 00:10:55,649 Works I did in the early '90s, like using my father's paintings, 145 00:10:55,649 --> 00:10:59,210 and so one of these works is included in the show. 146 00:11:00,416 --> 00:11:02,892 It's called "Objeto Util Pero Bonito". 147 00:11:02,892 --> 00:11:06,831 It uses one of the handrails in a painting by my father. 148 00:11:07,524 --> 00:11:11,800 That work, for me, is important in terms of understanding my own identity 149 00:11:11,800 --> 00:11:13,410 and my context, 150 00:11:13,410 --> 00:11:18,660 and in a way, I was trying to put every object possible in my work. 151 00:11:19,107 --> 00:11:22,740 It was like saying everything in the world is alive, 152 00:11:22,740 --> 00:11:25,830 and everything can go together, like being together, 153 00:11:25,830 --> 00:11:28,739 and as a metaphor for community as well. 154 00:11:33,765 --> 00:11:40,110 Here, the stairs, you can see they change because it's for the wheelchair here. 155 00:11:40,110 --> 00:11:43,200 And then the shape, I like it very much. 156 00:11:43,200 --> 00:11:45,830 I think of it as a sculpture as well. 157 00:11:45,830 --> 00:11:48,770 But this is one of my favorite sculptures of the house, 158 00:11:48,770 --> 00:11:54,000 which is this kind of groove made by the wheel of the wheelchair. 159 00:11:54,000 --> 00:11:59,860 So it was carved in time, for many, many years by my father's use. 160 00:11:59,860 --> 00:12:03,399 And then, because of this, I arrived to the consciousness 161 00:12:03,399 --> 00:12:06,590 or the awareness of the autoconstrucción 162 00:12:06,590 --> 00:12:12,949 as an engine for my work, as something that was in my soul and in my 163 00:12:12,949 --> 00:12:13,949 mind, 164 00:12:13,949 --> 00:12:15,840 but I didn't know. 165 00:12:15,840 --> 00:12:19,030 And then suddenly it's not that one night I understood, 166 00:12:19,030 --> 00:12:22,651 but slowly I understood that there was something, 167 00:12:22,651 --> 00:12:27,250 a strong influence of my context in the art I was making. 168 00:12:27,250 --> 00:12:30,669 (materials clattering) 169 00:12:51,238 --> 00:12:56,228 Sometimes I just play with the materials, finding combinations. 170 00:12:56,228 --> 00:12:59,998 (hammering) 171 00:13:01,718 --> 00:13:04,399 Just taking whatever is at hand, not really choosing, 172 00:13:04,399 --> 00:13:08,014 but thinking that any element can be used. 173 00:13:11,254 --> 00:13:14,380 And I think this is important, because it's not about 174 00:13:14,380 --> 00:13:16,839 choosing because it looks better or not. 175 00:13:22,043 --> 00:13:25,990 That it can work in this community of things. 176 00:13:28,537 --> 00:13:30,000 (Abraham coughs) 177 00:13:30,000 --> 00:13:31,910 Things, they speak. 178 00:13:31,910 --> 00:13:33,610 (materials clattering) 179 00:13:33,610 --> 00:13:36,493 I try to find the balance among them. 180 00:13:44,825 --> 00:13:47,162 In a way, I'm making a self-portrait. 181 00:14:00,922 --> 00:14:01,829 Constantly, I 182 00:14:01,829 --> 00:14:04,167 make sculptures that are about to collapse. 183 00:14:04,167 --> 00:14:07,382 They are not technically okay. 184 00:14:07,494 --> 00:14:10,470 For instance, a collector, if they want to collect something like that 185 00:14:10,470 --> 00:14:13,120 or keep them in their collection, they keep a problem. 186 00:14:13,501 --> 00:14:16,681 It's something that you have to protect from itself. 187 00:14:17,530 --> 00:14:21,970 This one, I cannot leave it here, because it's across the door, and I have to 188 00:14:21,970 --> 00:14:23,089 close the door, 189 00:14:23,089 --> 00:14:27,279 and it's because there is a large element that cannot fit in the studio. 190 00:14:27,279 --> 00:14:32,558 I would love to leave it like that and show it like this in a museum, if possible, 191 00:14:32,558 --> 00:14:37,046 stopping the door, like when you use a shoe to stop the door, 192 00:14:37,046 --> 00:14:40,470 using something like a tool, you know? 193 00:14:41,721 --> 00:14:44,130 Materials have different origins. 194 00:14:44,130 --> 00:14:46,259 This is dry meat. 195 00:14:46,259 --> 00:14:47,720 This is a piece of plant pot. 196 00:14:47,720 --> 00:14:50,660 This is one leg from a grill. 197 00:14:50,660 --> 00:14:57,250 This wood from beams from the house that I renovated recently, 198 00:14:57,250 --> 00:15:03,579 so materials I use from the demolition, so they have a proper history of their own, 199 00:15:03,579 --> 00:15:05,160 a long experience. 200 00:15:05,160 --> 00:15:14,568 This wood, it's like from late 19th century, so it has lots of things to say. 201 00:15:14,881 --> 00:15:17,630 But there are things that are just new, like these, 202 00:15:17,630 --> 00:15:21,660 that are maybe tasteless or they mean nothing, 203 00:15:21,660 --> 00:15:25,610 but at the end, everything works very well together, 204 00:15:25,610 --> 00:15:28,190 and I like to use like these bottle caps 205 00:15:28,190 --> 00:15:31,279 from beer that I drink with friends. 206 00:15:31,279 --> 00:15:35,060 This is from my new pants that I bought in New York last time, 207 00:15:35,060 --> 00:15:38,640 but they are too long because I'm not American size, 208 00:15:38,640 --> 00:15:41,500 so it's always like trying to find 209 00:15:41,500 --> 00:15:45,140 extra large clothes for my belly, 210 00:15:45,140 --> 00:15:48,820 but I have to cut a lot of the legs, so this is... 211 00:15:49,423 --> 00:15:51,500 I don't know. 212 00:15:51,500 --> 00:15:57,090 There's no real particular thing to say about anything, 213 00:15:57,090 --> 00:15:59,810 but the whole thing speaks together, 214 00:15:59,810 --> 00:16:02,220 and that's nicer, I think. 215 00:16:04,970 --> 00:16:06,189 No, not finished. 216 00:16:06,189 --> 00:16:07,611 (chuckles) 217 00:16:16,747 --> 00:16:21,769 (ambient electronic music) 218 00:16:21,769 --> 00:16:24,190 To learn more about "Art in the Twenty-First Century" 219 00:16:24,190 --> 00:16:25,944 and it's educational resources, 220 00:16:25,944 --> 00:16:29,910 please visit us online at PBS.org/Art21 221 00:16:31,072 --> 00:16:34,211 "Art in the Twenty-First Century" is available on DVD 222 00:16:34,211 --> 00:16:40,668 To order, visit shopPBS.org or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS 223 00:16:40,668 --> 00:16:45,799 (ambient electronic music)