adobe – The Humble Fabulist

Rafa Esparza: Staring at the Sun

July 19, 2021July 19, 2021 The Humble FabulistLeave a comment

Then going about ”browning the white cube”.

”Traditionally made by hand with dirt and other organic material such as clay, horse dung, hay, and water, adobe is among the earliest of human building materials. Due to their remarkable strength, sundried structures were extremely durable and functioned as some of the earliest architectural foundations for indigenous communities across the Americas. Adobe construction is still prevalent across the Southwest, a source of both strong and readily available building materials and income for the skilled laborers who use it.

Esparza explores adobe as both material and politics, creating what he has termed “brown architecture:” “My interest in browning the white cube — by building with adobe bricks, making brown bodies present — is a response to entering traditional art spaces and not seeing myself reflected. This has been the case not just physically, in terms of the whiteness of those spaces, but also in terms of the histories of art they uphold” (“Rafa Esparza,” ArtForum, November 21, 2017).”

…we are the mountain, 2019
Border Wash: Mexican immigrant labourers sprayed with DDT at processing centre in Hidalgo, Texas – after Leonard Nadel, 1956, 2019
Sebastian as Chalchiuhtlicue, 2019
Baby Boy: Beto with daughter Alexa (An epitaph for La Familia), 2019

Art by Rafa Esparza @MASS MoCA

Acrylic on adobe panel (local dirt, horse dung, hay, Hoosic River water, chain-link fence, plywood)

North Adams, MA

September 1st, 2019

Walk back in time ”at the mouth of Red-Willow Canyon”

February 7, 2021February 7, 2021 The Humble FabulistLeave a comment

Or Taos Pueblo, as it is most commonly known to non-Taos speakers. One of the most private, secretive communities, protective of their native culture and customs, so much so, that very little is known about their native ceremonial rituals to the outside world.

A village where homes are built entirely out of earth and straw, water and wood, stacked up to six storeys high so that one house’s roof becomes another’s floor or terrace, both depending on each other and being completely independent, since there are no internal doors connecting them. And, true to tradition, no electricity or running water is allowed inside.

A people balancing between their native religious traditions and Catholicism and being highly secretive of both, so no photography is allowed inside the Spanish colonial church of San Geronymo, the courtyard of which is the starting point of our guided tour of the village.

And certainly no outsiders’ presence is welcome in the native religious ceremonies and rituals that take place around the Blue Lake, or Ba Yhyea, an ancient sacred site for the Taos Pueblo community, hidden in the mountains we see rising beyond the village.