BIO

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

(We serve “TITIES” tamales)

Ceramic steamers, food, banner and lecture performance

— The first thing that attracted my attention in Bolivia were the termite nests. They look like brown human breasts, hard and porous, unevenly shaped, raising from the clay grounds of Santa Cruz… grounds heavily damaged by deforestation and by the growing city. As anyone who knows me knows, I am a fan of tits and I am a fan of food. Yet somehow it never occurred to me to compare human tits and cooking pots until I came to learn about termite nests. 

Se sirven tamales de

"PECHITOS"​

In this project, Paloma explores the dynamics that regulate relationships between territory structures, and working bodies with tits in non-urban spaces.

The morphological, imagined or poetic relations between the design of a termite and human tits; the reproductive labor done by women artisans in the region of Santa Cruz BO, and the knowledges created by both termites and artisans in their relation to the environment, inspired the making of ceramic steamers, a series of cooking events and lecture performances. For years, Paloma has developed story-telling sessions where food is the unraveling element to discuss human-environmental relations.

Tamales, a type of steamed corn bread, have become essential to tell these stories. Two tamales steamers where produced with the Mujeres Artesanas de Cotoca, a women ceramist association working in a small town near the city of Santa Cruz. The making of these steamers required knowledge of clay quarries and soil, of termites, and the thermoregulatory system of the nests. Further encounters with entomologist Miguel Ramos, anthropologist Mitsy Ramirez, and artisan Isabel Ballejo, facilitated the making of the design and its production.

The tissues in both termite nests and mammary glands, are imagined as spaces of vulnerable interactions, where exchanges of knowledge and materialities take place, and where one feels in contact with ancestry, history, and land. What invisible and visible matters do we exchange with environmental agents and what mechanisms and structures can we imagine to emphasize these relations?

Supported by ProHelvetia South America

Se sirven tamales de "PECHITOS"

banner for food and performance event at KIOSKO Santa Cruz