GRIS GARCÍA

Ghosts, Bones, Dust –o la tierra que se escapa– 

A project about the disappearance of diverse forms of life that can be observed in Northern Mexico landscapes. A research to address, through writing and drawing, these necrolandscapes generated by different violences and analyze how this is linked to the petrosexoracial system.

In Monterrey, the disappearance of diverse forms of life can be observed in the landscapes of death composed of rock, stone, sand, silicon, and dust from mined mountains. In the air of these necrolandscapes, sodium, potassium, and chlorine are breathed from the bones found in mass graves that surface from the earth beneath our feet. Nuevo León, the state of which Monterrey is the capital, is the top cement producer worldwide. This geological economy reproduces inhumane working conditions, pollutes and causes health problems, displaces and annihilates local flora and fauna under an extractivist system that Paul Preciado has called petrosexoracial.  Such violence coexists with the effects of the so-called “guerra contra el narco,” the war on drugs officially initiated in 2006 by former President Felipe Calderón that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and human disappearances.

How can we imagine other landscapes? This research project departs from my grandfather’s archive of about two thousand miniature paintings. As a landscape painter, he portrayed the mountains of northeastern Mexico for over 60 years; his work has motivated my reflections. In trying to deconstruct traditional ideas about the notion of “landscape”, I have found a reality marked by the colonial, patriarchal, and anthropocentric dimensions of the human gaze, which tends to understand nature as alien, demanding intangible resources such as beauty, or tangible ones such as its mineral resources. How can we stop creating landscapes of death and start creating living ones? May those ghosts, bones, dust, –o la tierra que se escapa– be the matter accompanying us to reconfigure other landscapes.