BIO

Que en la vida no nos falten

ni la lengua ni las patas​

• Jan-April 2022 @ Kulturlabor Villa Sträuli, Winterthur. Solo exhibition curated by Merly Knörle and Anabel Roque Rodríguez

Images © 2023 Paloma Ayala, All rights reserved

May in life they never take our tongues or feet

Embroidered cowboy style snake boots

texts, drawings and video 2023

The project´s title refers to a phrase coined by my aunt Candelaria Ayala while describing herself as a woman capable to move and pass knowledge throughout the small rural community of Ejido Ignacio Zaragoza. In the conservative environment of rural populations at the MX/US border, she was the outstanding gossip person who walked from farm to farm, to sell herbs and pass on information. At the age of 80-something, she was still outspoken and energetic, uncommon for the women of the region in her generation.​

​For this project, my aunt Cande tells about an imagined gesture of unintended resistance: walking around passing gossip and purposely spreading seeds of trees that will break the concrete of the growing nearby city of Matamoros.​

​The boots, a video, drawings and texts illustrate a research about regional trees that crack and damage cement infrastructures, a general undesired effect that happens within the relation of vegetation and urban development, but that my aunt beautifully imagines as a way of recuperating her cultural capital and community.

The Cracks in the vegetation-human relations

​self-published, 8pp

accompanying publication of exhibition @KulturLabor Villa Sträuli