Building Radical Soil highlights the works of Nyugen E. Smith, Maria Gaspar, Michelle Hernandez Vega, Koyoltzintli, Glendalys Medina, Carlos Rosales Silva, Lina Puerta, Justin Sterling, and Cinthya Santos Briones. Together the artists examine urgent issues that include extractive economies, environmental racism, and colonial settlement through the evaluation of ancestral, intergenerational, and community knowledge. They move us to appreciate the interrelatedness of our everyday lives and the environment. 

Proposing that identity is intrinsically integrated with land-- the land we are on and the land we come from, the exhibition explores belonging, power structures, and climate adversities. Many communities are affected by environmental catastrophe, leading to inequity and mass migrations. In response, some of the artists suggest an investment in ritual, myth, and language. Through performance, participation, field research, and activism– others reveal the invisible power structures that shape our world. All nine artists foster an understanding of home as an extension of the body-land relationship, questioning what forms of ecological caring we’re reclaiming, and what roles art/ists play in the planning of our future.

Building Radical Soil engages in a radical sense of ecology by imparting lessons for care and solidarity. The title draws from Aurora Levin Morales' famous essay, which is a call to consider the environment as an entry point into powerful lineages of resilience and communal preservation.

Sofía Shaula Reeser-del Rio, Curator

JANUARY 27TH - MAY 7TH 2022