WEBVTT 00:00:15.834 --> 00:00:20.054 (hammering) 00:00:21.997 --> 00:00:23.890 ABRAHAM CRUZVILLEGAS: I went to the streets in Paris 00:00:23.890 --> 00:00:26.599 looking for materials from demolitions. 00:00:29.279 --> 00:00:34.444 I was very interested in Antonin Artaud, the French poet, since I was a teenager. 00:00:37.482 --> 00:00:40.450 (materials clattering) 00:00:40.450 --> 00:00:45.210 for this project in Paris, I decided to approach him again. 00:00:45.210 --> 00:00:50.620 I like that he constantly looks for a transformation of language. 00:00:52.117 --> 00:00:59.640 This is Artaud's map of Paris, and I made some lines for describing possible 00:00:59.640 --> 00:01:00.640 paths 00:01:00.640 --> 00:01:05.320 between points, points that represent the mind of Artaud. 00:01:13.987 --> 00:01:16.869 For this exhibition, I went to the streets of Paris, 00:01:16.869 --> 00:01:20.200 and then I used Artaud's map of Paris 00:01:20.200 --> 00:01:22.439 to make sculptures in the spots where he used to go 00:01:22.439 --> 00:01:24.721 to visit friends or to have a drink. 00:01:25.816 --> 00:01:29.439 And I made sculptures in the place with the materials from the place, 00:01:29.439 --> 00:01:32.270 and I left the sculpture in the place. 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 00:01:38.082 --> 00:01:39.252 I made it. 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. 00:01:46.519 --> 00:01:49.050 (hammering) 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. 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, 00:02:07.350 --> 00:02:08.645 of course. 00:02:09.896 --> 00:02:15.939 At the beginning, I think it will look like somebody forgot to finish the work, 00:02:16.698 --> 00:02:21.698 until maybe you discover that there is something that joins everything together. 00:02:24.000 --> 00:02:26.580 There is another work that I did, a video. 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. 00:02:31.750 --> 00:02:34.440 We lived here three years and a half. 00:02:34.440 --> 00:02:35.610 It's myself running. 00:02:36.213 --> 00:02:39.968 Living here but not really being from here and then escaping from here 00:02:39.968 --> 00:02:42.376 but, in fact, running from myself. 00:02:46.598 --> 00:02:54.030 The very origin of autoconstrucción as a concept is related to people making their houses as 00:02:54.030 --> 00:02:55.030 they can. 00:02:55.030 --> 00:03:00.520 It's not a method or technique or style, 00:03:00.520 --> 00:03:04.709 but it's more like about the social circumstance and the political circumstance. 00:03:04.709 --> 00:03:09.643 People have no money to buy an apartment or a house at once. 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. 00:03:18.580 --> 00:03:21.930 One of his cousins told him, "There is this land there. 00:03:21.930 --> 00:03:25.330 Nobody's using it because it's so harsh." 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. 00:03:31.855 --> 00:03:36.436 There was nothing but rocks, so he started something out of nothing. 00:03:38.267 --> 00:03:40.730 With the community, they started helping each other 00:03:40.730 --> 00:03:42.520 to construct their houses, and, of course, 00:03:42.520 --> 00:03:46.550 they had no idea of architecture or construction even. 00:03:46.550 --> 00:03:49.821 They were just improvising with the materials they found. 00:03:50.670 --> 00:03:52.453 This was a big patio. 00:03:52.453 --> 00:03:53.630 There was a kitchen there. 00:03:53.630 --> 00:03:56.950 There was the bedrooms over there, and then the entrance. 00:03:56.950 --> 00:03:59.391 There was a fence, a wooden fence. 00:03:59.860 --> 00:04:01.280 There was no proper street. 00:04:01.280 --> 00:04:05.331 It was only loosened earth or rocks. 00:04:15.780 --> 00:04:16.829 The exhibition at the Walker 00:04:16.829 --> 00:04:18.810 is not conceived as a retrospective. 00:04:18.810 --> 00:04:23.453 It's more like a selection of works that are related to this idea of autoconstrucción. 00:04:24.615 --> 00:04:28.240 They have in common, I think, the will of learning, 00:04:28.240 --> 00:04:30.590 and I think it's been always there in my work, 00:04:31.014 --> 00:04:33.600 this necessity of understanding. 00:04:40.726 --> 00:04:44.510 Understanding or dealing with the concept autoconstrucción, 00:04:44.510 --> 00:04:47.548 it's also hard in Spanish, I would say. 00:04:54.271 --> 00:05:00.260 This is a work I call autoconstrucción: the resource room in which there is references, 00:05:00.260 --> 00:05:05.220 like the history of Mexico, immigration to the city. 00:05:06.560 --> 00:05:08.761 It's a sculpture that is growing. 00:05:08.761 --> 00:05:10.465 It's alive when people use it. 00:05:14.441 --> 00:05:19.119 There's lots of pictures of my neighborhood from family archives. 00:05:19.990 --> 00:05:22.470 There is also some silk screens that I made. 00:05:22.470 --> 00:05:26.190 They are copies of original pamphlets and fliers and posters 00:05:26.190 --> 00:05:31.093 from political movements in Latin America from 1968 to now. 00:05:32.880 --> 00:05:36.208 I like that it's more like a didactic device. 00:05:37.079 --> 00:05:42.663 People can understand more about the context of my autoconstrucción concept, 00:05:43.266 --> 00:05:48.080 things that are not necessarily related to autoconstrucción, 00:05:48.080 --> 00:05:51.720 but in my mind, they were important for me 00:05:51.720 --> 00:05:55.938 in my education and my configuration of the concept of autoconstrucción. 00:06:04.203 --> 00:06:05.239 (dog barking) 00:06:07.115 --> 00:06:08.030 (dog barking) 00:06:08.935 --> 00:06:14.819 (pair conversing in foreign language) 00:06:14.819 --> 00:06:17.310 My mother is the daughter of indigenous people. 00:06:17.310 --> 00:06:21.190 They lived in a very poor environment near Tacubaya in Mexico city, 00:06:21.190 --> 00:06:25.436 so it was not new for her facing problems, but it was worse. 00:06:26.468 --> 00:06:28.323 It was really a process 00:06:28.323 --> 00:06:33.137 of constructing our history 00:06:33.137 --> 00:06:34.217 together with others. 00:06:34.217 --> 00:06:35.901 It wasn't just about us. 00:06:35.901 --> 00:06:38.635 Here I earned what it is to be fraternal and to act in solidarity 00:06:38.635 --> 00:06:41.134 with these people, with this neighborhood. 00:06:42.060 --> 00:06:45.900 She had to transform herself, voluntarily or not. 00:06:46.634 --> 00:06:51.580 And then she became an activist, and then she became a stronger woman 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. 00:06:57.388 --> 00:07:00.430 With other women, they became organizers of the people, 00:07:00.430 --> 00:07:05.459 demanding the services, like asking for water or sewage or electricity, 00:07:05.459 --> 00:07:09.229 and as a child, I witnessed this transformation. 00:07:09.334 --> 00:07:12.344 So the house, for me, is important because of that. 00:07:12.440 --> 00:07:15.240 It's not only the formal appearance 00:07:15.240 --> 00:07:19.310 or the shapes it took in time according to specific needs 00:07:19.310 --> 00:07:24.413 but also according to the transformation of an ideology. 00:07:26.625 --> 00:07:30.440 This work is composed by a couple of videos. 00:07:30.440 --> 00:07:36.080 I made interviews with my parents separately so they could give their own tale 00:07:36.080 --> 00:07:38.060 about the construction of the house. 00:07:38.395 --> 00:07:42.397 They had contradictory perceptions of reality. 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. 00:07:49.554 --> 00:07:55.276 (overlapping speech in foreign language) 00:07:55.276 --> 00:07:57.724 My father, he's dead now. 00:07:57.724 --> 00:08:02.387 I think his perception of reality was pragmatic in many ways, looking at the 00:08:02.387 --> 00:08:03.387 landscape 00:08:03.387 --> 00:08:07.818 and describing the plants and the rocks as something nice, 00:08:07.818 --> 00:08:10.527 and I think I identify myself with him. 00:08:10.951 --> 00:08:14.620 I look at things very much like him. 00:08:14.620 --> 00:08:18.560 And my mother is more about the struggle, the fight, 00:08:18.828 --> 00:08:21.628 the corruption of the government, poverty. 00:08:21.740 --> 00:08:26.430 (overlapping speech in foreign language) 00:08:26.430 --> 00:08:29.340 I grew up with this kind of contradictory version 00:08:29.340 --> 00:08:32.240 of reality, and I like that very much, 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 00:08:38.080 --> 00:08:39.080 more and more 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 00:08:46.330 --> 00:08:47.630 elements. 00:08:48.635 --> 00:08:56.910 This space, we call it El Taller, because my father used to paint here 00:08:56.910 --> 00:09:05.520 and to read and to listen to music, and even when he stopped making paintings 00:09:05.520 --> 00:09:06.520 and sculptures, 00:09:06.520 --> 00:09:08.568 we kept calling it El Taller. 00:09:08.568 --> 00:09:11.359 So in a way, it was the heart of the house. 00:09:11.828 --> 00:09:14.710 He lived with the Franciscan people. 00:09:14.710 --> 00:09:18.999 He went there, not an orphan, but as the son of a single mother. 00:09:18.999 --> 00:09:22.740 And then my grandmother took him as a child there. 00:09:22.740 --> 00:09:28.120 He took the habits of the monk, and he learned to play many instruments and 00:09:28.120 --> 00:09:29.140 to paint, 00:09:29.140 --> 00:09:32.610 and all the things he knew, he learned it with the Franciscan people. 00:09:32.610 --> 00:09:36.550 I grew up as a Catholic, but I'm not anymore. 00:09:36.550 --> 00:09:45.842 But I understand, I think I understood this essence of Christianism in love. 00:09:46.691 --> 00:09:53.868 He loved religion like he loved God and the presence of God in everything. 00:09:53.868 --> 00:09:58.340 And I think that's why I also took this sort of animism in my work. 00:09:58.340 --> 00:10:02.890 I associate it with other ways of thinking, like Taoism. 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 00:10:09.930 --> 00:10:10.940 he is, 00:10:10.940 --> 00:10:15.964 he loves Francisco and the life he had. 00:10:16.411 --> 00:10:20.269 My mother keeps some of the objects my father did. 00:10:20.269 --> 00:10:22.120 He was more like a commercial painter. 00:10:22.120 --> 00:10:26.600 He made like hundreds of these paintings, very similar, if not the same. 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 00:10:32.610 --> 00:10:33.610 objects 00:10:33.610 --> 00:10:35.880 to sell to get an income. 00:10:35.880 --> 00:10:40.100 On that wall there is a portrait of my mother in the '60s. 00:10:40.100 --> 00:10:44.089 I think they have the same shape, the mushrooms and the hairdo. 00:10:44.089 --> 00:10:45.109 (chuckles) 00:10:51.095 --> 00:10:55.649 Works I did in the early '90s, like using my father's paintings, 00:10:55.649 --> 00:10:59.210 and so one of these works is included in the show. 00:11:00.416 --> 00:11:02.892 It's called "Objeto Util Pero Bonito". 00:11:02.892 --> 00:11:06.831 It uses one of the handrails in a painting by my father. 00:11:07.524 --> 00:11:11.800 That work, for me, is important in terms of understanding my own identity 00:11:11.800 --> 00:11:13.410 and my context, 00:11:13.410 --> 00:11:18.660 and in a way, I was trying to put every object possible in my work. 00:11:19.107 --> 00:11:22.740 It was like saying everything in the world is alive, 00:11:22.740 --> 00:11:25.830 and everything can go together, like being together, 00:11:25.830 --> 00:11:28.739 and as a metaphor for community as well. 00:11:33.765 --> 00:11:40.110 Here, the stairs, you can see they change because it's for the wheelchair here. 00:11:40.110 --> 00:11:43.200 And then the shape, I like it very much. 00:11:43.200 --> 00:11:45.830 I think of it as a sculpture as well. 00:11:45.830 --> 00:11:48.770 But this is one of my favorite sculptures of the house, 00:11:48.770 --> 00:11:54.000 which is this kind of groove made by the wheel of the wheelchair. 00:11:54.000 --> 00:11:59.860 So it was carved in time, for many, many years by my father's use. 00:11:59.860 --> 00:12:03.399 And then, because of this, I arrived to the consciousness 00:12:03.399 --> 00:12:06.590 or the awareness of the autoconstrucción 00:12:06.590 --> 00:12:12.949 as an engine for my work, as something that was in my soul and in my 00:12:12.949 --> 00:12:13.949 mind, 00:12:13.949 --> 00:12:15.840 but I didn't know. 00:12:15.840 --> 00:12:19.030 And then suddenly it's not that one night I understood, 00:12:19.030 --> 00:12:22.651 but slowly I understood that there was something, 00:12:22.651 --> 00:12:27.250 a strong influence of my context in the art I was making. 00:12:27.250 --> 00:12:30.669 (materials clattering) 00:12:51.238 --> 00:12:56.228 Sometimes I just play with the materials, finding combinations. 00:12:56.228 --> 00:12:59.998 (hammering) 00:13:01.718 --> 00:13:04.399 Just taking whatever is at hand, not really choosing, 00:13:04.399 --> 00:13:08.014 but thinking that any element can be used. 00:13:11.254 --> 00:13:14.380 And I think this is important, because it's not about 00:13:14.380 --> 00:13:16.839 choosing because it looks better or not. 00:13:22.043 --> 00:13:25.990 That it can work in this community of things. 00:13:28.537 --> 00:13:30.000 (Abraham coughs) 00:13:30.000 --> 00:13:31.910 Things, they speak. 00:13:31.910 --> 00:13:33.610 (materials clattering) 00:13:33.610 --> 00:13:36.493 I try to find the balance among them. 00:13:44.825 --> 00:13:47.162 In a way, I'm making a self-portrait. 00:14:00.922 --> 00:14:01.829 Constantly, I 00:14:01.829 --> 00:14:04.167 make sculptures that are about to collapse. 00:14:04.167 --> 00:14:07.382 They are not technically okay. 00:14:07.494 --> 00:14:10.470 For instance, a collector, if they want to collect something like that 00:14:10.470 --> 00:14:13.120 or keep them in their collection, they keep a problem. 00:14:13.501 --> 00:14:16.681 It's something that you have to protect from itself. 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 00:14:21.970 --> 00:14:23.089 close the door, 00:14:23.089 --> 00:14:27.279 and it's because there is a large element that cannot fit in the studio. 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, 00:14:32.558 --> 00:14:37.046 stopping the door, like when you use a shoe to stop the door, 00:14:37.046 --> 00:14:40.470 using something like a tool, you know? 00:14:41.721 --> 00:14:44.130 Materials have different origins. 00:14:44.130 --> 00:14:46.259 This is dry meat. 00:14:46.259 --> 00:14:47.720 This is a piece of plant pot. 00:14:47.720 --> 00:14:50.660 This is one leg from a grill. 00:14:50.660 --> 00:14:57.250 This wood from beams from the house that I renovated recently, 00:14:57.250 --> 00:15:03.579 so materials I use from the demolition, so they have a proper history of their own, 00:15:03.579 --> 00:15:05.160 a long experience. 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. 00:15:14.881 --> 00:15:17.630 But there are things that are just new, like these, 00:15:17.630 --> 00:15:21.660 that are maybe tasteless or they mean nothing, 00:15:21.660 --> 00:15:25.610 but at the end, everything works very well together, 00:15:25.610 --> 00:15:28.190 and I like to use like these bottle caps 00:15:28.190 --> 00:15:31.279 from beer that I drink with friends. 00:15:31.279 --> 00:15:35.060 This is from my new pants that I bought in New York last time, 00:15:35.060 --> 00:15:38.640 but they are too long because I'm not American size, 00:15:38.640 --> 00:15:41.500 so it's always like trying to find 00:15:41.500 --> 00:15:45.140 extra large clothes for my belly, 00:15:45.140 --> 00:15:48.820 but I have to cut a lot of the legs, so this is... 00:15:49.423 --> 00:15:51.500 I don't know. 00:15:51.500 --> 00:15:57.090 There's no real particular thing to say about anything, 00:15:57.090 --> 00:15:59.810 but the whole thing speaks together, 00:15:59.810 --> 00:16:02.220 and that's nicer, I think. 00:16:04.970 --> 00:16:06.189 No, not finished. 00:16:06.189 --> 00:16:07.611 (chuckles) 00:16:16.747 --> 00:16:21.769 (ambient electronic music) 00:16:21.769 --> 00:16:24.190 To learn more about "Art in the Twenty-First Century" 00:16:24.190 --> 00:16:25.944 and it's educational resources, 00:16:25.944 --> 00:16:29.910 please visit us online at PBS.org/Art21 00:16:31.072 --> 00:16:34.211 "Art in the Twenty-First Century" is available on DVD 00:16:34.211 --> 00:16:40.668 To order, visit shopPBS.org or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS 00:16:40.668 --> 00:16:45.799 (ambient electronic music)