This will pass

Gesturing an invitation to hop on and traverse time and space, a ghost party spaceship emerges from one of the corners of an open space in the hallways of NYU’s fourth floor at 20 Cooper. And on the wall to the ship’s left side a video is being projected through a circular window. This placement is fortuitous as it opens possibilities for reflection, conversation, and ways of imagining otherwise our collective future as diasporic and queer subjects and the bowsprit’s forward gesture, with its LED lights and Spanish moss, reveals this. These are some of the topics of interest among faculty and students. But they are also a matter of concern for and are relatable to all those that congregate in the gallery to study and reflect on art’s power to conjure alternatives to historical and systemic erasures. 

The installation This will pass, which consists of two pieces, Carrier and Porthole (see footnote), was imaged and manufactured by The Latinx Project’s AIR for 2024-25, Dalila Sanabria whom I had the pleasure of being in conversation on several occasions while the work was being done during the summer months of 2024. Sanabria’s Carrier re-imagines the Caleuche that indigenous folktales from the Chiloé Archipelago in Southern Chile have storied as a spectral vehicle that offers a moment of respite through celebration to those that have been cast off. Other accounts relate the ship’s ability to transform those that enter its space; among these myths is the ship’s potential to bring back to life and render eternal those that have passed. In this contemporary re-envisioning, Sanabria pays homage to her layered and diasporic heritage by bringing to fore indigenous mytho-historical accounts from the Southern Hemisphere, but also by constructing the spaceship with materials from central Florida where she grew up, such as palm tree leaves and Spanish moss. Sanabria brings together disparate (in)organic material and media—pine, oak and plywood wood, aluminum foil, palm trees, Spanish moss, led lights, and mirrors, and a video with a soundtrack—together to sculpt a transitory monument to our diasporic identities and geographies, while being intentional on safeguarding our sense of self to guide and transport us to a future where our mere existence is not only not questioned but celebrated, and the deformed disco ball and the silvered walls inside the ship are a glimmering indication of our celebration of waywardness. And Margot Loyola’s folk songs are mixed into dance tracks in Porthole to ensure not only a transtemporal and intergenerational conversation, but where lineage of femme strength and power are also sonically made manifest.    

The two pieces in This will pass are, in many ways, a continuation of Sanabria’s artistic practice thus far, one that I became familiar with only over a year ago when I did a studio visit while she was finishing her MFA at Cranbrook Academy of Art, April 2024. The visit entailed a 1:1 conversation in Sanabria’s Cranbrook studio and a tour of her piece in the MFA group show in the institution’s museum, Window (2023, 144 x 55 x 36”, bahareque—dirt, straw, clay, bamboo—stained glass, television screens, steel, rust, wood, insulation foam, accompanied by a 4:30 minute multi-channel video). In our conversations throughout that visit it was evident that Sanabria’s biography as the child of a Colombian father and a Chilean mother, and having been born and raised in Central Florida, with some time in her parentals’ home countries, allowed for a convergence of stories, experiences, and materials to inform Sanabria’s sculptural pieces that are also intimate in scope and nature, often the latter is revealed through the use of the videos embedded into the large-scale sculpture, as in Window. Sanabria’s sculptures, in other words, function more as ephemeral sites of memory as the (often organic) materials used are not meant to concretize an idea or an identity into forever monuments; they are meant to stand-out as their size may announce, but they also suggest transition of objects, stories, and identities, which may erode, transform or meld as we move queerly into the future.  

In This will pass the convergence of the material and the ethereal instantiates a cosmos into existence, where memory functions in ways that uphold those of us who feel a sense of being exiled and are queerly wayward, and the imagination ensures our survival in the future. While we may be uncertain of Carrier’s transit, joy and revelry are guaranteed within its confines. And this sustains us into the future. Sanabria is intent on putting the spotlight on how our queer brown femme bodies express freedom through communal gatherings of movement, and Porthole is a reminder that collectively we are a beautiful oppositional force to be reckoned with. Put differently, the earthen materials used for the vessel assure an exuberant transmission, and the corporeal kinetic movement and the sonic within the video as testament to queer femme resilience, Sanabria’s blend of aesthetics generate necessary tensions between what was and what is possible. In a sense, the large-scale installation is capacious enough to bring us into its fold and with its merriment-making potential, carry us into the queer horizon.

1. Carrier, pine, white oak, utility plywood, aluminum foil, wood glue, fiberglass, Spanish moss, palm leaves, mirror glass, silicone, disco ball motor, carriage bolts, LED light strips. Porthole, 42” TV screen, ultralight MDF, white paint, 36 x 97 x 3",” 10 minutes. Sound remixed by Sanabria, including music by Margot Loyola. Filmed in Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah. Featuring movements by Sanabria, Dee Watkins, Kindia du Plessis and Katelyn Field-Garcia.