Opening: Thursday August 10th 7pm
Lithophages is a long-standing project centered around the ingestion of stones and their inscription on the human body. The project has been ongoing for the past ten years, involving collective actions, installations, video projects, and publications that explore the potential effects of lithic inscription on the human body through the symbolism of ritual and collective actions.
Lithophages delves into the different processes of lithic ingestion and the biological, cultural and historical transformations that mutually affect stone and its ingestors. Lithophages begins in the mouth, the mediating device between the outside and the inside; the place of nutrition, breathing, appetite, language and knowledge. Ingesting is an act that redefines the boundaries between subjects and things, biological and non-biological matter. Ingestion reshapes the possibilities of our materiality, thus transforming our experience of the physical and non-physical world. Each ingestion is an action that destroys all immunity, enabling the reinvention of the bonds of the collective body and re-signifying the construction of relations between bodies. With the infiltration of exogenous bodies, we ingest their information, transcribing the objects and transforming the relational processes we hold with them.
The exhibition Litophages at the Museo Nacional de Arte is conceived as a platform for contemplation and dialogue in conjunction with the exhibition Goalito at the Centro Cultural de España in La Paz. These spaces serve as mirrors that complement each other, forming a kind of divided body. The exhibited works are artifacts born from various collective actions, termed “remnants” by the artist. They represent objects resulting from previous collective moments and actions, akin to traces that linger in a state of perpetual latency, awaiting potential reactivation.
The pieces on display traverse his entire body of work, revealing how his practice finds its foundation in experience, collaboration, and the exchange of knowledge through constructed situations. His creative devices aim to reshape our perception of reality, intervening in it to lead us into his personal universe. Within this realm, multiple layers of knowledge converge and intermingle with various forms of symbolism and poetic expressions that expand and overflow.
Image courtesy of the Centro Cultural de España en La Paz.
