Adobe House (Casa De Adobe), 2020

Adobe House, is an installation that conjures up my family’s house in Jalisco, Mexico. I wanted to recreate the ruins of my mother’s house here in the States. Her house in Jalisco, made out of adobe was abandoned in 1975, without maintenance and care, the house has been recycling itself back to the earth as it slowly falls apart, joining the land as it once was before. With my mother’s help and guidance, this work was created in quarantine during the pandemic.

I am creating a bridge between the house in Jalisco and my house in Norwalk that sits on Tongva land, while thinking about labor and the housing crises in LA. Using my hands to make adobe is a laborious job and making the material that is used historically to make adobe bricks in order to build a house out of it. 

I have photographed this house for many years throughout its process of decay, during my time visiting. The adobe house has been getting smaller in size after each visit. The roof, wooden doors, and most of the structure are now gone. All that is still standing is hardly recognizable. A house that I never entered when it once stood completely, due to the fear of scorpions and snakes inhabiting the house.

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Reconociendo is an installation which involves the use of home-made adobe bricks, photographs, and installation. The project was conceived while thinking about land, displacement, the effects of colonization through the lens of the ruins of my mother’s house in a rancho in the municipality of Tamazula, Jalisco, Mexico. Researching and learning about land biology along with my mother’s memories of making adobe bricks, we started making our own hand-made bricks using the indigenous land we sit on.