ClayWordsmithing
Palabrero de Barro / Muddy Mourn
Video sculpture
co-edited by MartinSanchezeme
Amsterdam – Subachoque – Choachí 2021 - 2023
Muddy Mourn is a grieving practice with clay, tracing the actions I did to hold the pain of my grandmother Inés’ passing. Digging for clay under a pea field near my parents’ home, moistening the clay, wedging it, and sculpting a mountain to hold us together, later releasing this spiritual and mud-woven body into the creek. To take and to release. To take, transform, and then release. To work with the bowels of the earth.”
Clay is a deeply wise and patient companion to grief.
This video offers a language and a layer of translation to that cellular dialogue between my skin and the territory, held by clay. A linguistic heartening on working with clay and ceramics as cosmo-political practices that can situate us within the cosmos and the territory we are a part of.
The final editing was made by Colombian video artist Martin Sanchezeme.
This work is situated in Subachoque, Colombia, and was filmed by my mother María Inés Mora in January 2022.