Muicle: Materials Taxonomies in Abya Yala

Materials regain a special sense in this exhibition. From the ancestral and non laboratory based use of materials, as botanical pigments; to the taxonomies and its way of organizing, naming and labelling the materials, Gómez Castro advocates for a political practice of care and empathy that resonates in a mindful way within an environmentally responsable art production. 

The exhibition, curated by Marta Gualda, has brought together a diverse selection of art, ceramics and furniture that span geographies and periods. Nineteen process-based dye paintings by Araceli Gómez Castro in 19th century  frames are placed alongside an antique 18th century bench originally used in a Monastery in the South of Spain. In addition there are thirteen ceramic pots “tinajas” from Spain from the 17th to the 19th century and four ancient water pipe lines. The exhibition evokes the slow manufacturing and the intimate reflexion that remain in time over centuries and traditions. Domestic objects and discarded materials are revalued as porters of life for the future. 

Pigments are made by fourteen process-based dyes created from Muicle, achiotl, avocado seed, eucalyptus, curcuma longa, tejotlate, cochinilla, corteza Sagrada, cuapascle moss, pericón, among others. The canvases are 100% organic cotton, hand-spun and hand-woven fabric from Oaxaca. The textiles are made by a community that has ancestral knowledge of textile making. 

The degree of intervention in the extraction of plant tones endowed a great symbolic force, including a performative act (performance) in its origin, absenting the function of being merely decorative, imposing the auto-ethnographic dominance of the artist committed from her childhood.

Castro’s paintings posses an innate value thanks to the highly complex technique of color extraction. This creates an interest that is situated above what corresponds to drawing, color, abstract form or composition. So we could speak of pure Informalism in its style, where the material and the gesture, the chance and improvisation, and a strong ideological base related to the existentialism corresponds to the work of Araceli Gómez Castro.