Arrullo

How can we sing to volcanoes we cannot see? Amauta García & David Camargo’s research is guided by their familial, intergenerational, and earthly inheritance: Where did our family come from and why did we live in the neighborhood where we grew up? How can our generation afford housing in increasingly gentrified cities? Can we make impossible wishes come true? Could we return to the womb? Their works have investigated the impact of housing market bubbles and the endeavor to find tenderness in a sometimes violent world. Together, they have delved into the history of García’s mother, who in 1971 participated in Latin America’s largest illegal land invasion in the volcanic enclave of southern Mexico City. Bringing in elements of architecture, sculpture, video, and virtual environments, García & Camargo tell stories that are at once personal, social, and political.

The desire for home, García & Camargo’s practice reminds us, extends beyond its walls to affections, lore, and our longing to feel shelter. Yet, the artists warn, sometimes we do not know the voices of the soil that sustains us nor how it was forged. García & Camargo ask: How can we relate to the earth beyond its exploitation? How do people who have shaped the land relate to the volcanoes that create or destroy our worlds? During their residency at the Jan van Eyck Academie, García & Camargo began a conversation between the volcanic soil of their homeland and the underwater Dutch volcano Zuidwal, wounded by years of gas extraction.