Gabriel Chaile, born in 1985 in Tucumán, Argentina (Northern region of Argentina), describes himself as a “visual anthropologist.” He works with a variety of mediums and concepts, but notably through large earthen sculptures with forms reminiscent of distinctive ceramics of the Condorhuasi-Alamito peoples (c. 400 BCE–CE 700, Catamarca, Argentina) (BAMPFA). Chaile works through a concept he calls “the genealogy of form”, which he uses in his work to express the humanity and history of the form of these special objects, which he feels have been left out of education and museums in his life. His large earthen sculptures often anthropomorphize these distinct ceramic forms, breathing life into them from the anthropological histories or mythologies, as well as contemporary social references. He has had his work featured at the Venice Bianale 2022, Art Basel 2018, BAMPFA and more.

Chaile works with self-described “very simple, basic, and also symbolic” materials, namely clay and adobe. He states his familiarity with clay, both as a building material, and as a vital part of the kitchen and culture through clay ovens. Because of this anthropological and cultural value he sees in the kitchen and cooking,  many of his sculptural works are also clay ovens, such as the piece featured in Art Basel Cities 2018, “Portrait of Diego Nuñez” https://chertluedde.com/exhibition/art-basel-citiesgroup-exhibitioncurated-cecilia-alemanibuenos-aires6-12-september-2018-2/

Video: (Art Basel) Meet the Artists | Gabriel Chaile:

Video Transcript:

Chaile: “What I would have liked, if I hadn’t been an artist, is to be a preacher or an archeologist. There was something about being a communicator and a researcher that I liked. I define myself as a visual anthropologist because I try to understand behavior through visual elements. From that I draw conclusions, and construct theories about my works, which I then apply to the community, and our current state in this world. 

Haydar Yaghma, a humble yet prolific Iranian Poet, carved his legacy not only in verse but in the earth itself. Born into a life of labor, Yaghma spent his days shaping adobe bricks—a traditional craft in Iran’s sunbaked landscapes—while his nights were filled with the spirit of words and ideas. Despite his profession, Yaghma’s poetic talent soared; he composed over 5,000 verses that speak to the beauty of simplicity, the resilience of the working class, and the profound connection between humanity and the land. His verses, grounded in the experiences of everyday life, offer readers a raw and unfiltered view into the soul of a man who, though seemingly bound to the soil, found liberation in poetry. Haydar Yaghma remains an emblem of authenticity and passion in Persian literature, bridging the gap between the hands that labor and the mind that dreams.

Who is Christine Howard Sandoval?

Sandoval is an interdisciplinary artist working across media including sculpture, installation, performance, and public art. Her versatile practice allows her to express her conceptual interests through a variety of artistic forms.

Sandoval is currently an Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Praxis in the Audain Faculty of Art at Emily Carr University (Vancouver, BC). Howard Sandoval is an enrolled member of the Chalon Nation in Bakersfield, CA. As an artist and writer engaging with timely ecological and social justice issues, Sandoval’s practice is situated within important contemporary conversations around environmentalism, indigeneity, and cultural representation.

https://www.brokenboxespodcast.com/podcast/christine-toward-sandoval

Cultural Identity and Influences:

As someone of Mexican and European American descent, Sandoval’s multifaceted cultural heritage is a core influence on her artistic vision and the themes she explores.

Her work often engages with questions of land, place, and indigenous environmental knowledge, reflecting her connection to the American Southwest region where she is based.

This cultural hybridity and commitment to representing marginalized perspectives is a key aspect of Sandoval’s artistic identity.

Education and Career:

Sandoval has formal training in the arts, holding a BFA from the University of New Mexico and an MFA from UC Davis.

Her educational background has provided her with a strong technical foundation to realize her conceptual ideas across different mediums.

Over the course of her career, Sandoval has exhibited her work internationally and received prestigious awards and grants, indicating her recognition within the contemporary art world. Howard Sandoval has been awarded numerous residencies including: UBC Okanagan, Indigenous Art Intensive program (Kelowna, BC), ICA San Diego (Encinitas, CA), Santa Fe Art Institute (Santa Fe, NM), Triangle Arts Association (New York, NY).

Examples of her work:

-Coming Home, August 21 – October 31, 2021

“In Coming Home Christine Howard Sandoval explores the history of California Indigeneity and its relationship to the archive, a place in which collective memory is stored. In California, the documentation constructed by settlers embodies a narrative of erasure but is also embedded with the seeds of Indigenous knowledge paramount to the reconstruction of Indigenous language, cultural practices, and relationships to the land. Howard Sandoval works with the archive to trace the migration of her Chalon Ohlone ancestors, telling the story of her community, her family, and her coming home to California.”

Document Mounds- Application for Enrollment with the Indians of the State of California Under The Act of May 28, 1928 (6 pages), 2021, inkjet print on vinyl, tape, adobe mud, and steel, 24H X 16W X 7D inches each.

Surveillance Mound, 2021, adobe mud, tape, steel, wood, wire, paint, 89.5H X 19W X 19D inches.

Sending Signals Into The Ground To Form Images Of What Is There To See, 2020, adobe mud on paper, 60 X 96 inches.

-The green shoot that cracks the rock, May 27 – July 16, 2022

“Howard Sandoval’s embodied work confronts the complex history and innate interconnection of land and body. As she traces a path to her ancestral home, the artist scrutinizes the narrative of erasure in early North American settler’s records and reassigns power through documentation of embedded Indigenous cultural practices. Her poetic oeuvre seeks to weave a collective awareness back to nature by means of a more cyclical and deepened relationship with land and place.

The land, as an ever-evolving being, plays a central role in Howard Sandoval’s visual language. Taking adobe as her main medium, the artist explores its inherent properties of historical, familial and ecological histories. Adobe mud requires a bodily process to mix soil (sand, silt and clay), water and often straw to form a workable, malleable and ultimately structural material. In this ongoing investigation, she emphasizes the intentionally omitted history of forced labor, land theft, and the violent genocidal actions Indigenous people experienced.”

Installation view, the green shoot that cracks the rock, parrasch heijnen gallery, LA, 2022

Niniwas- to belong here, 2022, single channel video with audio, TRT 12:23, Sound design in collaboration with Luz Fleming

Installation for the green shoot that cracks the rock, parrasch heijnen gallery, LA, 2022

Stretcher- For The Transportation of Water, 2021 adobe mud, tape, steel, wood, wire 54 x 56 x 27-1/4 inches

More  of her work: 

Mound- Angle of Integration, 2020, adobe mud and graphite on paper, 60 X 96 inches.

 Pillars- An Act of Decompression, 2020, adobe mud and graphite on paper, 60 X 96 inches. 

Arch- A Passage Formed By A Curve (detail), 2020. Photo by Scott Massey.

360 VIRTUAL TOUR:

Creative Output:

In addition to her visual art practice, Sandoval is also a published poet and essay writer.

Her literary work, like her art, delves into themes of land, place, and environmental stewardship from an indigenous-influenced perspective.

This dual commitment to both visual and written expression demonstrates Sandoval’s versatility as a creative practitioner.

References:

-https://www.chsandoval.com/home

-https://www.parraschheijnen.com/artists/christine-howard-sandoval

Jackie Amézquita (Quetzaltengo, Guatemala, b.1985) lives and works in Los Angeles, California. She is an artist with a multidisciplinary practice. Her research is articulated through the use of material and forms associated with pre-Columbian cultures. Amézquita creates public performances, installations, and objects that fuse indigenous mythologies with contemporary community engagement.
Amézquita received her M.F.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2022 and her B.F.A. from Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA, in 2018. She has exhibited with The Hammer Museum, LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions) CA, LAND (Los Angeles Nomadic Division) CA, 18th St Art Center CA, The Armory Center of the Arts CA, Vincent Price Art Museum CA, The Annenberg Space for Photography CA, Human Resources Los Angeles CA, MAD (Museum of Art and Design) NY. Amézquita is the recipient of the Mohn Public Recognition Award (2023), Mohn Land Award (2023), Andy Warhol Foundation for the Arts Los Angeles Art Fund (2022), and National Performance Network Fund (2022). Amézquita has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, ARTnews, and The Art Newspaper, LA. Weekly, hyperallergic, Walker Art Center magazine.

Works

SOIL

Soil source from the 1,951 mile border that connects the U.S and Mexico, corn masa, salt, cal (dehydrated lime), rain water, framed with copper.

Copper

Banana, salt incubated over a period of five months on copper

Fiber

Pasadena, California
Dimensions: 40’X40’

Sueños Fértiles, 2018 (Fertile Dreams) looks at the journey thousands of people make across different border entries into the United States. In this installation, I’m interested in the transformation that happens to a body upon entering a new space, as well as the effect of this interaction on the space. This exhibition is the next evolutionary stage of my previous installation, Mi Ultimo Suspiro, 2017 (My Last Breath). In Sueños Fértiles, I reconnect the remains of the clothing and towels that soaked all the water from the previous installation by casting them with salt, forming crystallized bundles of memories.

Door/Loom: Construction wood, screws, nails, woven clothing from people that migrated from different parts of the world, fiber crochet chains, 100% American soil, 45% traveled 150 miles South West of Pasadena, 5% traveled 140 miles south of Pasadena, 45% traveled 5.1 miles west of Pasadena, and 5% traveled 2.5 miles east of Pasadena (The soil was transported in the home depot buckets), acquired clothes from the different border that connects the US and Mexico, laundry detergent and salt (Crystals were formed inside the home depot buckets), 100 % Latin American string, Home Depot rags and towels from Mi Ultimo Suspiro.

Dimensions variable

In Between Borders, 2017 is a silkscreen of three photographs taken in 2016 of the border of Ramallah in Palestine, the US border of San Ysidro, CA, and Tijuana, BC, Mexico, and a window in Jerusalem, Israel.

Public works

A collaborative performance during AMBOS Project with Tanya Agüiñiga.
Douglas, Arizona-US, and Agua Prieta, Sonora-Mexico

Backstrap weaving is a time-honored technique that requires a long, narrow loom wrapped around the waist of the weaver and secured to a stationary object. In tension, Tanya Aguiñiga and Jackie Amézquita’s bodies serve as stationary as both the body and the stationary object weave from one side to the other side of the border fence. Agüiniga and Amézquita received training in back strap weaving from Mayan women in Chiapas and Guatemala, respectively. Aguiñiga is a staunch advocate for honoring pre-colonial cultures and knowledge through the art of backstrap weaving while also maintaining a strong connection to physical labor. Meanwhile, Amézquita sees weaving as a way of reconnecting to one’s cultural identity and ancestral knowledge.

The border fence united the two artists during an activation at the border. Aguiñiga was stationed in Douglas, Arizona, while Amézquita was in Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico, in full view of the US Border Patrol. This location holds immense significance for Amézquita, who attempted to enter the US undocumented as a teenager to reunite with her mother in 2003.

Nakbe, El Mirador, Petén Guatemala Photos by Rony Rodriguez

It’s an activation in Nakbe, approximately 13 kilometers south of El Mirador in Guatemala. Nakbe is one of the oldest cities in the region currently occupied by Petén Itzá. Archaeological excavations in the area suggest that the city is from the formative period or pre-classic 1400 BC. It’s believed that the city collapsed in 100-200 AD. Amézquita thinks of soil as an archive that holds the memory of the past. During this activation, the environment witnessed the integration between human and nonhuman entities. The actions of Amézquitas’s body in space serve as a conduit of reconnection between the past, the present, and the future. The feathers on her head were found during the journey, acknowledging the animal entities that inhabit the place.

Attending to the wound: a wake, a waiting, a witnessing 2023

Performance with LaRissa Rogers 23:49 min
Documentation provided by LACE, edited by Vladimir Santos.

attending to the wound: a wake, a waiting, a witnessing is a performance activating a collaborative installation of Hieroglyphs of metaphysical lacerations, drawing from previous works A Poetic of Living 2019 by LaRissa Rogers and Sueños Fértilez 2,018 by artist Jackie Amézquita. Using Black Care by Calvin Warren as a point of departure, the performance starts at sunset and works through grief, solidarity, and weight transfer. The performance addresses the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

References

–  https://hammer.ucla.edu/made-la-2023-acts-living/jackie-amezquita

– https://jackieamezquita.com/

Dineo Seshee Bopape is a South African contemporary artist known for her multimedia installations, video art, sculptures, and performances, in which she incorporates organic materials like soil (EARTH), coal, ash, and clay.  Her environmental installations delve into themes of memory, identity, and belonging, pushing visitors to experience soil in a completely different way. 

Bopape’s art draws heavily on African cosmologies, oral histories, and indigenous knowledge systems, addressing the complexities of belonging and displacement. Born in Polokwane, South Africa, the artist takes from her own experience and weaves narratives that investigate archetypes and myths in which the female figure plays a central role.

Her practice reflects on the body, emotions, trauma, and the unseen or spiritual dimensions of life. Her installations evoke layered meanings and leave room for ambiguity. Viewers must therefore engage with both material and metaphor.

With memory, belonging, and place.

Her installations have been featured all around the world, making it toPirelli HangarBicocca’s gallery in Milan, Italy with  Born in the first light of the morning [moswara’marapo].

This exposition asks the question: What Memories are preserved in Stones, Water, and Earth?

Here, historical and geographical references are brought together, to reflect on the memory, and more specifically the transmission of memory through natural elements like water and earth, and the use of sounds and words as healing.   The installation draws on the symbolic use of earth, organic elements, and rituals, alluding to ancestral connections, healing practices, and African cosmologies. “Moswara’marapo” translates from Sesotho to “the smell of bones,” which adds a layer of meaning to the work, suggesting ideas of mortality, memory embedded in the earth, and the cycles of life and death.

“Born in the first light of the morning [moswara’marapo]” is just one example of the ways Dineo Seshee Bopape translates memory, spirituality, and materiality into powerful artistic experiences. But her work extends far beyond this single installation. From “Untitled (Of Occult Instability) [Feelings]” to  “More/Moreana,” Bopape’s art challenges us to engage deeply with themes of identity, healing, and historical trauma.

Her use of natural elements like soil, water, and ash does more than reflect the material world—it urges us to question our relationship with these elements. Her work invites us to consider how land and memory are intertwined and how ancestral knowledge persists within the earth and within us. Through her installations, Bopape reminds us that nature is not just a backdrop to human experience but a living archive that holds our histories, traumas, and hopes for transformation.

References

• Soil, Dust, Life: Dineo Seshee Bopape on Her Earthy, Searching Art
• Toronto Biennial of Art 
• Pirelli HangerBicocca
• Between Mud, Matter and Mother

Rafa Esparza is a Los Angeles-based multidisciplinary artist, known for exploring the intersections of history, identity, and place through his work. Born and raised in East L.A., Esparza draws inspiration from his Mexican-American culture. His installations, performances, and sculptures delve into themes of colonization, queer identity, and environmental concerns, critiquing ideologies, power structures and binaries. Esparza frequently collaborates with other artists and his community, including his family members.

His most prominent works consists of building adobe structures in unconventional spaces, such as the Los Angeles River and art galleries. This in reference to both his familial roots and indigenous building traditions they also emphasize the labor and traditional skills involved.

“I just knew that adobe had a special place in his own personal history, and I thought it could be a good way to start  having conversations about some guidance that I needed at the time as a young person coming into adulthood. What it did, in fact, was allow us to share space without being at each other’s necks, while he passed down this way of working with land”

Rafa Esparza, on mending his relationship with his father through earth

Esparza challenges institutional frameworks and addresses socio-political issues (e.g. immigration, race, and marginalization). His work, at its core, is about storytelling and resistance, using art as a platform to engage with broader discussions on identity and systemic injustice.

In Whitney’s 2017 Biennial, in New York City, Rafa Esparza’s Figure/Ground: Beyond the White Field, created an immersive microclimate.  What was once, a white cubed gallery is covered in what Esparza calls “brown matter,” adobes; a mixture of hay, clay, horse dung, and water from the LA River, baked under California sun, and transported across U.S. coast’s. By invitation fellow queer artists to become adoberos, and helped to collectively created nearly five thousand adobes for the installation.

“Brown matter” or adobe is used not only in reference to skin color, but also a broad range of conversations on race, nationality, ethnicity, and gender and the intersections therein. Most especially, concerns surrounding the 2016 U.S. Presidential election of Trump.

To complete the installation, five other artists were invited to exhibit their mixed-media artwork within the adobe rotunda. The adobe rotunda plays is both an artwork itself and a space for exhibiting the work of others (figure and ground).

References

• Juxtapoz, rafa esparza: A Sense of Generosity
• United States Artists: rafa esparza
• Common Wealth and Council: rafa esparza
• Queer Art: rafa esparza
• South West Contemporary: Figure/Ground
• Whitney Biennial 2017: Rafa Esparza