Abraham Cruzvillegas: Autoconstrucción | ART21 "Exclusive"

[Abraham Cruzvillegas: Autoconstrucción]

You can see, we have all this rebar coming out

from the roofs of autoconstrucción houses

as people think they can keep building--

making new room for new members of the family
and so on...

This is my father, with his cane--

his walking stick.

My mother,

my sister Eréndira,

and Chucho, my brother.

My parents decided to expand and to construct more

because we grew up.

We became teenagers

and we needed independent rooms.

We started building down...

in the back there, rooms for Rosa and for
my brothers and me.

And a new kitchen.

But it was very slow.

Autoconstrucción is more about self-constructing

or constructing your own house.

I like the term because, for me,

it leads me to think on the construction of identity.

This is where my father used to brush his teeth.

So he had here a small tub with water and he...

to wash...

and spit here on the tree,

covering, in white, the bricks,

as you can see there.

So it was, kind of, a slow painting.

My father had an accident--

a car accident.

And then he wasn't able to walk anymore

and he was on a wheelchair.

And then we built the ramps

all around the house.

And here,

the stairs, you can see,

they change because it's for the wheelchair, here.

All the additions--

furniture and so on--

we did many of these things ourselves.

That's why they are so badly done.

They are ridiculously made because they are
not made by experts.

I never tried to illustrate this,

but to use it as a source of energy

for my work.

[Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN]

--Yeah.

--It's good.

Many of my works are definitely unfinished voluntarily.

When you look at the roofs of the houses

and there is this rebar coming out there

like an optimistic hope of being finished,

that’s my reference, I would say.

I don't want to represent houses,

or parts of houses

or illustrate autoconstrucción,

but to activate the dynamics of autoconstrucción
in my work.

Like, improvising--

doing things with whatever you have at hand.

Not thinking that much in an architectonic

or tectonic way,

but more like answering to immediate needs

like a playfulness, for instance.

--It's from the hotel!

And I think what I like, a lot of these constructions--

these houses that all overlap together,

the houses and the people,

you know, like the activities and the energy.

You can see through them.

They are transparent, let's say.

This is my ideal of what an identity should be,

transparent.

We go through a long, long path to become
ourselves.

I'm still constructing myself.

I just want to understand who I am

and where I come from.

And I come from Marcel Duchamp,

I come also from Colony Ajusco.

I come from Eduardo Costa.

And I come from David Medalla.

And I come from autoconstrucción.

And I come from Mexico.

What can I say? [LAUGHS]