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Mud kin: mapping adobe and land-based indigenous and Latinx projects form southern California to west Texas

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Mud kin: mapping adobe and land-based indigenous and Latinx projects form southern California to west Texas

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Content Mud Kin
August 2023
Copyright 2023 Tracy Fenix
Mapping Adobe and Land-based Indig enous and Latinx Projects from
Southern California to West Texas
by
Tracy Fenix (Native Tejana)
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ROSKI SCHOOL OF ART AND DESIGN
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(CURATORIAL PRACTICES AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE)
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to all the participating artists, friends, thesis committee, and community land
stewards from and living on Tongva, Chumash, Apache, Pueblo, Diné, Ohlone,
and Ute territories. I share my deepest gratitude to my family, my mom Norma Jean, and
siblings, Alyssa Chandelle and Elifete Paz for accompanying and supporting me
on this participatory mapping project journey. I'm grateful to scholars, Dr. Gregory
Cajete, Dr. Kim TallBear, and Dr. Annette Kim, who've influenced and informed my
scholarship. May this ongoing curatorial mapping project continue to build healing
indigenous & BIPOC kinship and radical sustainable collective actions unencumbered
by post-colonial borders and climate change.
Sowing seeds for our future kin together.
Committee Faculty: Dr. Annette Kim, Dr. Jenny Lin and Dr. Suzanne Lacy.
ii
Table of Contents
Abstract................................................................................................................................................ ......v iii
List of Figures............................................................................................................................................iv
Chapter One: Introduction: A Personal, Feminist Place-based History of Land Art..................................1
Chapter Two: What is Mud? Earthen-Adobe Materiality & Artistic form s.................................................8
Chapter Three: Honoring & Learning from New Mexico Adoberas..........................................................11
Chapter Four: El Chuco: Queering the El Paso Borderland terrain.............................................................31
Chapter Five: West Texas Glorified Art Rural Towns & Ancestral Lands.................................................34
Chapter Six: Cultural Preservation of Adobe Mexican Histories in Tucson................................. ..............50
Chapter Seven: Embodied Archives & Activating Ancestral Indigeneity in California.............................53
Chapter Eight: Latinx & Indigenous Futures in the Land Back Movement...... ..........................................70
Chapter Nine: Mapping "Mud Kin " via GIS Storytelling............................................................... .... .........72
Glossary of Terms................................................................................................................................. .......75
Bibliography........................................................................................................ .........................................81
Addendum of Contributing Artists & Activists Interviews........................................................................83
Sandro Canovas
William Camargo
Christine Howard Sandoval
Joanna Keane Lopez
Camille Hoffman
Arlene Mejorado
Miguel Mendias
Reyes Padilla
Carlos Jaramillo
Jose Villalobos
Daisy Quezada Ureña
Acknowledgements.....................................................................................................................................ii
iii
List of Figures (in the order below)
Beyonce jumping in front of the Marfa Prada installation, Chinati Foundation, 2013.........................................5
Jackie Brookner, Of Earth and Cotton , earthen feet installation, Of Nature exhibition, 2016.
Photo by Stefan Hagen. Courtesy of the Brookner estate and Wave Hill............................................................7
Photo of myself plastering an adobe wall with a trowel taken by artist & facilitator,
Joanna Keane Lopez hosted by the NDN Collective at New Mexico Earth Adobe yard
owned by Helen Levine, Albuquerque, NM ......................................................................................................12

A close-up workshop photo leveling out the adobe bricks before applying more mud plaster
to build up the wall. Joanna Keane Lopez and Ronald Rael, Antonito, CO, August 2022... .............................17

Plastering (I’m seen in black) an adobe home in Antonito, CO with Ronald Rael and Carole Crews
with other participants, Antonito, CO, August 2022............................................................................................17
Photo of the Lafayette Head Home & Ute Indian Agency with a mural by Chip Thomas
commissioned by Ronald Rael, August 2022, Conejos, CO. Courtesy of the artists..........................................18

Ronald Rael, inside Lafayette Head Home & Ute Indian Agency, Conejos, CO, May 2021, PBS.
Photo by Kate Perdoni.........................................................................................................................................19
Inside view of the UTE Indian House with a mural by Chip Thomas, August 2022.
Photo by Tracy Fenix.........................................................................................................................................19
Joanna Keane Lopez & Carole Crews, Alíz, Pigments & Finish Plaster workshop, August 2022,
Antonito, CO, Photo by Tracy Fenix..................................................................................................................20
Joanna Keane Lopez & Carole Crews, Alíz, Pigments & Finish Plaster workshop, installation view,
August 2022, Antonito, CO. All photos courtesy of the artists..........................................................................20
Joanna Keane Lopez, Land Craft Theatre, exhibition installation, SITE Santa Fe, 2021.
Photo by Brandon Soder......................................................................................................................................21
Joanna Keane Lopez, Lópezville, Socorro, 516 ARTS, Adobe, dirt, wheelbarrow, shovel, screen, wooden
forms, creosote, manta de techo, liquor bottle shards, calcimine paint on adobe, tumbleweeds, archival
photographs, maps & documents, 2022. Courtesy of the artist..........................................................................22
Roxanne Swentzell, clay pottery and etching on an adobe wall inside the Swentzell Tower Gallery
at the Poeh Cultural Center, August 2022...........................................................................................................24
i v
A photo documenting the outside of the Roxanne Swentzell Tower Gallery, an adobe mica building,
August 2022.....................................................................................................................................................24
Cougar Vigil, (Apache) photographer and current Outreach Coordinator at the Poeh Cultural Center,
August 2022.....................................................................................................................................................25
Photo of Cougar Vigil, artist, Camille Hoffman & myself outside the Poeh Cultural Center,
August 2022.....................................................................................................................................................25
Photo of Roxanne Swentzell by Julien McRoberts.........................................................................................25
Jonathan Loretto (left) and Roxanne Swentzell (right), photo referenced from their
Bosque Botante interview by Daisy Quezada Ureña. Courtesy of the artists.................................................25
Daisy Quezada Ureña, Brotante Bosque project, detailed book cover of amaranth – a native plant
to New Mexico, 2021. Courtesy of the artist..................................................................................................27
Daisy Quezada Ureña, land-based installation, date unknown.......................................................................27
Reyes Padilla, Synful Norteno painting and mica installation, August 2022, Albuquerque, NM..................29
Jose Villalobos, Vaqueros, self-portrait, June 2022. Visual Direction assisted by Austin Alegria.
Photo courtesy of the artist..............................................................................................................................32
Jose Villalobos, De Los Otros, Installation, Artpace San Antonio, 2021. Courtesy of the artist...................33
Jose Villalobos, De Los Otros, Installation detail, Artpace San Antonio, 2021. Courtesy of the artist.........33
Portrait of my mom standing next to her childhood adobe home in Van Horn, rural West Texas,
December 2023, Photo by my sister Alyssa Chandelle..................................................................................35
My mom’s childhood adobe home in Van Horn, rural West Texas, detail shot, December 2022.
Photo by Alyssa Chandelle.............................................................................................................................35
“Defend the Adobe & Adobe es Politico” Campaigns by Sandro Canovas,
wheatpaste in situ, Marfa,Tx, 2020................................................................................................................38
Adobe maestro and activist, Sandro Canovas with Marfa native artist & activist,
Miguel Matias, Dec 31, 2022.........................................................................................................................38
Donald Judd, The Block, Marfa, Texas. Courtesy of the Chinati Foundation..............................................40
Photo of myself standing inside Frank Lloyd Wright’s Freeman House during a
USC Heritage Conservation Seminar tour, May 2022, Los Angeles, CA....................................................41
v
Inside view of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Freeman House, May 2022, Los Angeles, CA...............................41
Rafa Esparza,Whitney Biennial, 2017. Courtesy The Whitney Museum of American Art...................44
Rafa Esparza, Tierra. Oro. Sange , Ballroom Marfa, 2019. Courtesy of the artist.............................45
Rafa Esparza, Shattered Glass, 2021. Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles. Photo: Joshua White.
Courtesy of the artist and Commonwealth and Council.................................................................. ..........46
Rafa Esparza and Eamon Ore-Giron. Talking Shit with Quetzalcoatl / I Like Mexico
and Mexico Likes Me, 2017. Wool,76 x 76 x 94 inches, Tierra. Oro.
Sange exhibit, Ballroom Marfa, 2019. Courtesy of the artists..............................................................45
James Turrell, Roden Crater, ©2023 Skystone Foundation; all images © James Turrell.......................48
Michael Heizer, “45°, 90°, 180°,” City (© Michael Heizer; photo by Ben Blackwell,
courtesy Triple Aught Foundation).........................................................................................................48
Dr. Lydia Otero in the historic district of Barrio Viejo standing next to the
Candelera art installation, January 2, 2023.............................................................................................52
Dr. Lydia Otero’s childhood adobe home referenced from In the Shadows of the Freeway
book published in 2019....................................................................................................................... .....52
Christine Howard Sandoval , Document Mounds - Application for Enrollment with the Indians
of the State of California Under The Act of May 28, 1928, 2021. Courtesy of the artist............55
Christine Howard Sandoval, archival, for Rosario Cooper and my 10 year old self , 2021.
Courtesy of the artist..............................................................................................................................55
Camille Hoffman, See and Missed, San Luis Obispo Museum, August 2022.
Photo by Stephen Heraldo, 2022. Courtesy of the artist.....................................................................57
Camille Hoffman, MOTHERLANDS, exhibition installation, August 2022............................................58
Detail installation photo of Camille’s mother, Melinda Hoffman’s self-portrait documenting
her pregnancy with Camille while in New Mexico, MOTHERLANDS installation................................58
Arlene Mejorado, Desterrando Archivos , family portrait at her grandmother’s adobe
ancestral home, June 2022. Courtesy of the artist.....................................................................................60
Arlene Mejorado, Desterrando Archivos , self-portrait, adobe home in the background,
June 2022. Courtesy of the artist................................................................................................................61
William Camargo, , Ya'll Forget Who Worked Here? , Origins & Displacements series, 2020.
Courtesy of the artist..................................................................................................................................63
vi
William Camargo, All That I Can Carry #2, 2020. Courtesy of the artist..................................................64
Ozzie Juarez, Portal de Tlaloc (2022), Water-based enamel, acrylic, spray paint, and earth on canvas,
awning, and lights, 120 x 144 x 36 in. Courtesy of the artist and Ochi Projects, LA............................66
Tlaloc Studios, (Ozzie Juarez seen painting), Hyperallergic, March 26, 2021.
Photo by Jorge Cortez..............................................................................................................................66
Carlos Jaramillo, Atlakatl Ce Tochtli Orozco, Tokala series, originally published in Vogue, 2022.....68
Carlos Jaramillo, El Sereno Garden, Tokala series, 2022.........................................................................68
Nani Chacon,THE FIRST CREATURES TO HOLD THE KNOWLEDGE OF EVERY WORLD,
2022, SITE Santa Fe, August 2022. Courtesy of the artist....................................................................71
Nativo hotel, Albuquerque, NM, August 2022. Photo by Tracy Fenix. ..........................................71
Tracy Fenix, Mud Kin: A Southwest land-based mapping project on contemporary
Latinx and indigenous artists working with adobe-earthen practices along the borderlands, ArchGIS
StoryMap, prototype, February 2023...........................................................................................................74
v ii
Abstract
“Mud Kin: Mapping Adobe and Land-based Indigenous and Latinx Projects from Southern
California to West Texas” is the investigatory research component of a multifaceted project on the
Indigenous- and Latinx-led, adobe-based interventions against settler colonialism and other oppressive
regimes of power in the ancestral lands of First Nation and Mexican people in the southwestern United
States. My master’s thesis research empathetically documents and contextualizes the ongoing
relationships, artistic participatory strategies, and issues of gentrification and capitalistic tensions of
indigenous and Latinx communities residing in the Southwest borderland space occupying indigenous
spaces of belonging and dissonance. Adobe is an artistic indigenous-led cultural thread supporting the
overall narrative as a form of documenting the legacies of queer, indigenous, and BIPOC land-based
interventions in participatory place keeping strategies along borderland communities.
Exploring and documenting the ongoing critical relationships between indigenous land-back
initiatives in conversation with creative placemaking and reparative mapping strategies in Latinx and
indigenous borderland art communities, I collaborated with eleven Latinx and indigenous artists and
activists based along the borderland via interviews and site-based adobe workshops including the NDN
Collective and adobe-builders like Ronald Rael and Joanna Keane Lopez. My goals were to document
Latinx and indigenous adobe, earthen, and land-based ecological artists encompassing a total of eleven
artist/activist interviews based throughout Southern California to West Texas including the following
participants: Joanna Keane Lopez, Christina Howard Sandoval, Arlene Mejorado, Jose Villalobos, Reyes
Padilla, William Camargo, Sandro Canovas, Camille Hoffman, Carlos Jaramillo, Miguel Mendias, and
Daisy Quezada Ureña. These documented interviews were collected to be featured in an interactive
mapping project on Arch GIS used as a curatorial and policy-based tool for researchers, cultural bearers,
and indigenous and communities of color building within the field of adobe and traditional ecological
land-based practices. Moreover, my goals were to collect unconventional artistic and archival materials
through photographic and archival interventions that express indigenous place keeping, radical
transnational liberation and preservation through kinship, traditional ecological knowledge practices and
artistic communities preserving built and imagined earthen-adobe environments outside of carceral
borderland infrastructures. I will highlight the structural inequities of environmental impacts and policies
of rural built environments and emphasize the urgency to preserve Latinx / indigenous-led knowledge in
cultural and environmental policies around earthen and adobe urban planning and sustainable
preservation initiatives throughout the Southwest region of the U.S.
This multi-layered “Mud kin” project, extending beyond my thesis, encompasses interviews,
publication, mapping tool, and exhibition. “Mud Kin” offers dynamic cultural resources for Latinx and
indigenous communities across the Southwestern U.S., building and strengthening the collective power
of resistance shared among indigenous and Latinx communities living in borderland spaces.
Contributions to the historic preservation, urban planning, and public arts fields include developing a
comprehensive, interactive mapping tool of land-based and adobe artists and activists to portray an
intersectional analysis of indigenous creation stories, traditional ecological knowledge methodologies,
urban policies, and archival frameworks encompassing earthen and land-based initiatives impacted by
displacement, gentrification, and modern-day settler colonialism.
v iii
Introduction: A Personal, Feminist Place-based History of Land Art:
In the small West Texas town of Van Horn, near Marfa, an infamous rural town put on the global
art map by land artist Donald Judd, I was raised with my two siblings in the Chihuahuan high desert. Due
to lack of funding, arts education was almost non-existent. We grew up reading 1970s encyclopedias and
self-learned arts and crafts from what knowledge we could gather. We meandered the desert with
curiosity, making play forts out of cacti, tending to my grandmother’s pomegranates and rose bushes, and
exploring our sense of wilderness freedom unlike most urban city kids can fathom. It was to our
astonishment that we later found out in our early twenties about Donald Judd’s land art and sculptural
movement in nearby Marfa, Texas. To add more weight to this contemporary moment, Van Horn is today
grappling with the complex realities of Blue Origin, a private space company owned by Jeff Bezos,
founder of Amazon. Settler colonialism, privatized tech wealth, and arts gentrification in rural towns
throughout the borderland areas from California to Texas constitute oppressive power structures in our
contemporary movement of climate change, land back initiatives, preservation of Latinx and indigenous
rights, and the scarcity model of housing and generational wealth in communities along the borderland.
In the contexts of historical redlining and ongoing gentrification, and amidst contemporary struggles for
equitable land ownership for BIPOC communities, I aim to address historic and contemporary settler
colonialism along the borderlands, highlighting contemporary Latinx and indigenous artists activating
critical land-space narratives through experimental land-based, earthen, and adobe artistic practices in
Los Angeles, Tucson, New Mexico, and West Texas areas. Throughout my thesis, I work through
participatory mapping methodologies that narrates the collection of work through my ancestral native
adopted frontera relationality alongside my family, friendships, and ecological kinships spurred
throughout this research process beginning in the fall of 2021. My research narration is guided through
site-specific exploration geographically from Los Angeles to West Texas – each chapter speaks to land-
based and adobe sites and artworks specific to the indigenous and latinx histories of each place of kinship
and belonging. Donald Judd began his practice in the early 1970s and relocated to Marfa from Soho,
New York to expand his experimentation with land sculptures and practices. Judd’s work expanded with
1
the Chinati Foundation, however, there was little engagement with local Mexican / Tejano communities
in the town and broader West Texas rural areas. It wasn’t until I began my undergraduate studies at the
University of Texas at Austin that I began to understand the complex relationship between white artists
engaged with land art and lack of access to brown and indigenous local communities. It wasn't until early
2013 that Marfa began to receive global recognition from Beyonce's photo seen of her jumping into the
air in front of the Prada store-front desert installation. Amidst disbelief and astonishment, we felt
betrayed by Chinati Fondation’s exclusive, inaccessible art practice that willfully ignored locals of the
surrounding area in its arts engagement, exhibitions, or educational programs during my childhood in the
late 1990s and early 2000s. Growing up, my two siblings, Elifete Paz and Alyssa Chandelle, learned our
first arts and crafts activities by reading outdated 1970s encyclopedias that our loving, adopted maternal
grandmother had gifted us to learn about the world in our rural hometown. Our mom, Norma Jean, was
adopted at birth into a fifth-generation Tejano family; her biological birth mother is from the Presidio/
Ojinaga area of indigenous Apache and Mexican descent. Immediately following my maternal
grandmother’s passing in 2013, my mother’s adopted family disowned and ex-communicated us on the
evening of my grandmother’s funeral for reasons still unknown. Adoption and separation of indigenous
and immigrant families is a chaotic and traumatic experience that takes a lifetime to unpack and heal –
cultural heritage and ancestral knowledge are violently erased and uncertainty impacts one’s
psychological and daily lived experiences. Following this rupture, we were disheveled and our small
family began on our collective search for understanding our personal and cultural borderland native
relationships to rural West Texas, making way for this project to be deeply rooted in our family’s
collective land-based practices – my mom’s pottery, my sister’s photography, and my brother’s poetry
and fictional writing. I share our subjective histories as way to make deeper connections with the
participating artists engaged in my “Mud Kin” research, who further critique themes of displacement,
kinship, ancestral connectedness and knowledge, and legacies of communal and intimate trauma
embedded in earthen-adobe and land-based practices. Growing up my siblings and I taught ourselves
screen printing using cut up potatoes; explored theatrical expressions, and my brother deeply rooted
himself to creative writing from encyclopedic reading teachings. My brother immersed himself in these
2
readings, later transforming creative worlds in his poetry, fictional writings and film projects. We took
these creative lessons and wandered the desert freely – playing in muddy arroyos in the desert during
monsoon season and built makeshift fortresses in cacti bushes by upcycling abandoned junk in the desert.
There were no arts museums or art programs in rural West Texas – we had no clue who Donald Judd
was, much less any awareness that Marfa had received national recognition for contemporary art. Marfa
became globally recognized after Beyonce made a digital appearance on Tumblr seen jumping in front of
Marfa Prada back in 2013.
Since then, Marfa has become an iconic destination for trendy, affluent, white urban city artists
to flaunt their pseudo-country aesthetics for social clout and other marketable strategies to capitalize on
similar “Santa Fe” art town tropes – cowboy boots and hat, overalls, and aspirations to own or rent an
adobe home in the Southwest. Although we all know Beyonce’s brilliance lays grace to all she touches –
the racial capitalist market follows closely behind. In this capitalistic market, it would be remiss to
assume, gentrification does not occur in small rural communities like Marfa or Van Horn, Texas,
particularly as corporations seek cheap land, labor, and capitalize on class inequities in small town’s
poor municipal infrastructure like clean water, sewage, and housing markets. Given this context, I aim to
discuss the fraught tensions engaged with land-based artist practices, adobe politics, preservation
models, and creative strategies of resistance to class warfare and displacement, and emphasize the
inherited kinship and storytelling of indigenous creation stories that make up site-specific Southwest
region territories from Los Angeles to West Texas. I’ve had the privilege of connecting with the artists
further discussed throughout this paper from prior relationships and connections that were extended and
reciprocated alongside the community.
3
Furthermore, I aim to deconstruct the historical practices of land art and adobe practice by
considering Latinx and indigenous artists’ site-specific ancestral relations to historical and contemporary
landscapes and territories in the Southwest region of the U.S/Mexico borderland. My intentions are to expand
the relationship between land stewardship, ecological kinship and preservation through the built environment
and experimental artistic approaches related to the materiality of adobe and earthen-based practices often
embedded in the context of settler colonialism. The site-specificity of indigenous lineages offers ways of
understanding the significance of origin creation stories of indigenous communities through relationships to
adobe, earthen, and land-based practices. Throughout the process of mapping the represented artists – they
each maintain an ongoing relationship to the broader Southwest and U.S./ Mexico borderland region where I
facilitated interviews of each artist’s activist practice and site-specificity of their work in the context of
earthen and adobe relationality.
The thematic contemporary exhibitions and conversations around land, soil, and adobe are embodied
through each artist’s site-specific relationship to upbringing, ancestral lineage, traumatic unearthing of
borderland violence, and ongoing remediations of prolonged effects of climate collapse in the Southwest.
Although these themes critically examine the construction of settler colonialism and its contemporary issues
around gentrification, borderland violence, and ongoing environmental toxicity and racism in the Southwest,
I aim to prioritize the reclamation of ancestral knowledge tied to healing the body of the land as exemplified
in these living land-based artistic works. The breadth of these artistic works produced by Latinx and
indigenous artists are presented through site-specific earthen and adobe installations, archival and
photographic works, and film-based productions related to land or earthen-based projects. Through these
activist portrayals embodied in intimate and collective healing, I aim to weave together the reclamation of
“Land Back” and environmental policies of BIPOC-led stewardship and artistic interventions of the
ecological and ancestral lands mapped from Los Angeles to rural West Texas.
4
Beyonce jumping in front of the Marfa Prada installation, Chinati Foundation, 2013.
5
About six years ago, I left Austin, Texas to cut my curatorial teeth in New York City, where I
began a year-long curatorial fellowship at Wave Hill, a public garden and cultural center in Riverdale,
Bronx, focused on site-specific environmental and land-based art projects and exhibitions. For my first
exhibition, I was tasked with supporting the retrospective of the late Jackie Brookner, a Jewish
environmental sculptor and ecoartist focused on land-based remediation projects throughout New York,
the South, and site-specific wetland installations in Finland. Brookner represented a white feminist
undertaking of land art – often dominated by white men – from the early 1980s until 2000. Brookner’s
artistic practice was rooted in organic essentials – dirt, water, bronze, and moss. Brookner’s
bio-remediation and earthen sculptures encompassed a Jewish sensibility of “tikkun olam,” a Hebrew term
meaning to “repair the world” accompanied with a rigorous indigenous-based research framework frequently
citing native Pueblo scholar, Gregory Cajete. Brookner’s environmental projects at that time spoke to the
limited narratives missed in the broader scope of land art, particularly neglecting women, indigenous, and
people of color from this movement. Moreso, I emphasize Brookner’s work to reveal both my initial
beginnings working with land-based art projects, as well as critique the systemic inequities of gender and
racial representation and indigenous autonomy and agency within the oeuvre of land, earthen-adobe, and
environmental public art. The historical focus of land art will be a revisionist framework that upends white
male artists, paired with my lived narrative experiences while moving through these site-specific locations,
from New York City to the broader Southwest area of my ancestral lands located in rural West Texas.
Brookner’s “Of Earth and Cotton” earthen sculptural feet project from 1994 to 1998 focused on the
“westward migration of the cotton belt in the South, speaking with Black communities who farmed and
picked cotton by hand in the 1930s and ‘40
1
s.” Brookner met with these Southern Black elders and sat on the
ground to sculpt portraits of their feet, using the soil from fields nearby revealing the brown and red ombre
soil shifts imbuing an elder’s lived essence in their footprint. Documenting the historical traumas of Black
farmers, Brookner understood the sensitivity and delicateness required to share space and be entrusted with
Black communities embodied experiences of the South. Brookner aligned with New York feminist
1
Gellens. (2016). Wave Hill Retrospective Focuses on Ecological Artist Jackie Brookner.
6
contemporaries like Jewish artist, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, known for “maintenance art” and her most
recent, ongoing earthen-based art project, LANDING at Freshkills Park in Staten Island. Ukeles, similarly,
has generated public art works that activate “tikkun olam” through remediation performances while working
with the City of New York Department of Sanitation since the 1970s. I had the opportunity to meet Ukeles’ at
Wave Hill’s “Of Nature” symposium in honor of Jackie’s life and retrospective exhibition held the week of
the 2016 Trump inauguration. It was an unruly awakening, but the symposium offered a communal space of
mourning and activist exchange in preparation for the hardship that lay ahead. Ukeles was a close friend of
Brookner – they often exchanged ideas and communal forms of artistic support.
Jackie Brookner, Of Earth and Cotton, earthen feet installation, Of Nature exhibition, 2016. Photo by Stefan Hagen.
Courtesy of the Brookner estate and Wave Hill
7
Chapter Two: What is Mud? Earthen-Adobe Materiality & Artistic forms:
My thesis focuses on the historical and contemporary materiality of earthen-based adobe, and
archival photographic portrayals of the broader Southwest regions embodied particularly though site-
specific adobe infrastructures and home spaces. The construction of adobe and its relationship to Spanish
settler colonialism has had a complex and systemic impact on the broader Southern California and
Southwest regions of indigenous territories. In this section, I aim to unpack the relationality of adobe in
southern California and the broader Southwest U.S., and my intimate ancestral connections specific to
rural West Texas. The materiality, construction, and plastering aspects of adobe-making will be briefly
covered and highlighted through the specific works of “enadoberas” and artists taught and trained
throughout this regional area. I will emphasize the deeply-rooted communal networks sustained through
both Latinx and indigenous elder knowledge and teachings in these adobe buildings. I will further address
the site-specific relationship between artists’ use of soils, clays, and other binders that preserve and hold
adobe forms throughout the various geographic terrains documented from Bakersfield, California to West
Texas. I critically examine the historic and contemporary construction of adobe in context of settler
colonialism and contemporary infrastructures of gentrification and cheap manufactured materials that
harm the preservation and re-construction of adobe architecture. I intend to clarify the significance of
adobe-making, preservation, and expansion of contemporary artists rebuilding experimental ancestral
forms through adobe and earthen materials, archives, and photo documentation of homespaces in the built
environment. For brevity, I will use the suggestive term “earthen-adobe '' to strengthen the unity between
adobe and earthen forms, so there are parallels between the contemporary art definitions of materiality
and ancestral relationships of mud art ecologies. The ecological kinships shared between adoberas and
artists will be reviewed through the process of knowledge sharing of adobe construction, production, and
intergenerational adobe-building (adoberas) facilitation across regions, particularly emphasizing the
feminist, matriarchal leadership across this production and knowledge sharing process. The act of an
8
adobera is the stewardship and mastery of producing adobes throughout the New Mexico and Southwest
area. This community-appointed term of “adobera” may not always be shared widely with other adobe
activists, makers, and earthen-based artists. Moreover, the language of “adobera” can be seen as an act of
resistance within the broader context of land art and early earthen and ecological artists of the 1970s and
80s
2
. This affirmation, reclamation, and empowerment of “adobera” emphasizes the stewardship of
indigenous-led knowledge and communal knowledge sharing process throughout the construction of
adobe forms that is often dismissed in historic, white-informed land art practices.
In addition, I will build up to addressing site-specific adobe and earthen artistic practices that are built
and informed by shifting historical colonial border influences from southern California to West Texas.
The architectural emphasis opens critical conversations around identifying contemporary examinations of
settler colonialism in Latinx and indigenous practices and reclamation of ancestral homelands in the built
environment. The minerals applied to adobe further emphasize the embodiment of clays in the
surrounding environment throughout the Southwest – they hold cultural, ancestral, and architectural
significance that acts as a natural preserving skin for adobe formations. The specification of such
minerals will be discussed in relation to the architectural forms of the site–specific works by artists
engaged within this earthen-adobe network.
“Adoberas,” adobe feminist masters often based in New Mexico and West Texas regional areas
where historically adobe homes were built by Latinx and indigenous communities along the borderlands,
often facilitate the materiality, construction, and plastering aspects of adobe-making practices. Adoberas
also foster the sharing of ancestral knowledge related to the construction of adobe-making within
community practices across the borderlands. Adoberas cultivate the regional nuances of identifying
distinctions between clay, sand, minerals, soil, and topographic distinctions across geographic territories
throughout the Southwest borderlands, offering possibilities for distinguishing historical and cultural
relationships between this migratory ancestral pathway unified by mud kinship. Mud kinship is embodied
in this sensory and temporal understanding of site-specific geographic terrains, in this context, across the
2
Crews, Carole. Clay Culture: Plasters, Paints and Preservation (29-53).
9
borderlands through ecological interventions and earthen-adobe architecture and art installations.
Mud kinship is applied distinctively through specific styles of mudding, plastering, restoration, and
clay-based painting within relation to regional varieties of earthen materials and indigenous
cultural origin stories throughout the borderlands and broader Southwest. Mud Kinship is engaged
and practiced within community circles for sharing resources, ancestral knowledge, and reciprocity
of sustaining human, plant and non-human relationships. Mud Kin is an ancestral relational term
that seeks to unify the myriad and nuanced forms of First Nation tribal and Global South
indigenous land stewardship and caretaking as applied though traditional ecological knowledge
and regenerative practices, activist interventions, cultural preservation exhibited through counter
narrative archives, and sustainable adobe indigenous architectures as practiced throughout
Southern California to West Texas. Mud Kin is simply the beginning of an urgent and necessary
ongoing, interactive curatorial and policy-based mapping project that hopes to unify First Nations
and Global South regenerative, earthen-adobe, and land-based practices in spite of colonial forms
of post-capitalism realities.
10
Chapter Three: Honoring & Learning from New Mexico / Colorado adobera artists:
To understand the regional specificity of adobe-making, I will highlight three influential elder
adoberas –Helen Levine, Carol Crews, and Roxanne Swetzell based in Albuquerque, Espanola/ Santa Fe
and Taos, New Mexico, who facilitate ancestral adobe-making among younger generations of feminist
adobera artists and community activists. In November 2021 on Native American Heritage Day, I
participated in an NDN Collective “Adobe Building” climate preparedness workshop
3
with New Mexico
artists and adobera Joanne Keane Lopez alongside Helen Levine, owner of New Mexico Earth Adobes in
Albuquerque. During our two-day weekend workshop, Helen Levine introduced us to the adobe brick
manufacturing yard (established in 1972), the only one of its kind throughout the Southwest. Lopez
began her working relationship with Levine from her early adobe-making beginnings over 10 years ago,
and the two have since then consistently shared collaborative workshops and rapport. Lopez and Levine
both note the importance of knowledge sharing and community-building adobe skills across generations
throughout New Mexico
4
. Since the 1970s, New Mexico Earth Adobes has opened space up to architects
like Ronald Rael, and artists like Christine Howard Sandoval and Joanne Keane Lopez, while enabling
adobe restoration projects throughout the Southwest. During the workshop, Levine demonstrated the
essentials required to build adobe bricks – clay, silt, sand, and water known as loam and a heavy mixing
process involving frequent shoveling and hand mixing. Understanding the right balance between all
three elements requires nuanced, trained hand-eye coordination to decipher gradient textures and solidify
processed adobe mixtures before thickly applying them directly with your hands into the brick molds
laid out to dry outside in the sun for up to a week, depending on weather conditions.
3
NDN Collective, Climate Preparedness Workshop hosted on November 26, 2021 in Albuquerque, N.M.
4
Crews and Lopez, New Mexico Earth Adobes, workshops, 2018-2023, Albuquerque, N.M.
11
R: Photo of myself plastering an adobe wall with a trowel taken by artist & facilitator, Joanna Keane Lopez hosted
by the NDN Collective at New Mexico Earth Adobe yard co-owned by Helen Levine, Albuquerque, NM,
November 2021. L: A close-up workshop photo leveling out the adobe bricks before applying more mud plaster to
build up the wall.
12
We learned how to distinguish three distinct architectural features – adobe arches, adobe hearth
and bullnose edges – and later laid out and plastered an adobe arch wall completed by the second day of
the workshop. An adobe arch creates a simple woodless window feature in a dwelling or wall structure.
The arch is made by two arch-shaped pieces of plywood the width of window glass spaced apart as a
temporary fixture to maintain the form while laying down adobe bricks filled with mud plaster and rocks
in between them to create the adobe arch form. There are many different techniques to build and support
adobe structures – rammed earth, compressed earth blocks, earthbags, light clay straw mixtures. The
workshop taught plastering and clay-based painting techniques specifically related to the adobera artists’
site-specific earthen-based works. An adobe hearth is an earthen fireplace structure made with adobe
bricks and mud. Adobe bricks can’t burn, so the hearth is a natural architectural ancestral form embodied
throughout homes in the Southwest. However, planning regulations have strictly enforced codes that
outlaw certain adobe fixtures, thus limiting the continuation of ancestral adobe architectures that embody
vernacular forms of climate resistance. Rounded bullnose edges involve dipping burlap into a bucket of
clay slip and using it to prepare wood for plaster and cover old wood in adobe home door entrances, as
alternatives to metal wires. The burlap is wrapped around protruding walls or entrances to act as natural
insulation and plastering methods as well as offers a pleasing streamlined appeal
5
(Carole Crews).
Plastering an adobe structure is similar to icing a cake, and the structure can be coated with natural finishing
bonding minerals, such as aliz with lime, casein washes and/or mica. Aliz is a clay slurry that is washed over
plastered adobe with a sponge to seal any cracks and protect the exterior. Mica is a flat shimmery mineral
found in arroyo beds and other specific geological regional sites like Tierra Caliente, New Mexico, often
applied to adobe homes and structures throughout the New Mexico area. New Mexico contains over 90% of
the world’s mica and is often used for technological features, such as computer and phone devices
6
. New
Mexico’s environmental landscape is heavily exploited and fraught with systemic issues of environmental
racism, toxic waste dumps, and community harm directly impacting indigenous communities and territories
of over 36 indigenous communities including Pueblo, Apache, and Diné tribes.
5
Carole Crews, Clay Culture: Plasters, Paints and Preservation. (Lama Foundation, 2009)
6
Beiser, Vince, The Ultra-Pure, Super-Secret Sand That Makes Your Phone Possible. (Wired, 2018)
13
The use of mica throughout adobe structures acts as a form of indigenous resistance against
corporate exploitation. To honor natural pigmentations of surrounding terrains by mixing them into clay–
based paints to adorn adobe walls serves as an act of resistance. Crews acknowledges fellow adobera
Roxanne Swetzell’s decades long adobe work, particularly building clay hornos and adobe buildings in
Pueblo communities. Swetzell’s community-based work and impact will further be discussed later in
relation to Santa Fe’s cultural impact.
In August 2021, I joined Taos-based, elder adobe-maker Carole Crews and Joanne Keane Lopez
for their co-facilitated clay-based adobe painting two-day workshop with earthen architect, Ronald Rael
in the rural high desert of Antonito and Conejos, Colorado. Since the 1970s, Crews has built adobe
dwellings and mastered clay-based painting techniques in the surrounding Taos and Santa Fe areas,
collaborating with Roxanne Swetzell and others. Crews and Lopez have
Ronald Rael has had ongoing collaborations with several Southwest regional adobe and earthen-based
projects with his Rael San Frantello architectural studio. Rael is most known for his teeter-totter U.S-
Mexico border wall project created on July 28, 2019, wherein he installed three pink teeter-totters for
families to interact and play with each other across the border wall despite ongoing rising immigration
tensions. These playful, interactive structures disrupted the border wall’s architectural purpose of
separating migrant and native families. As Rael explained on the MoMA website, his teeter-totter project
serves as a metaphor: “border as a literal fulcrum between US-Mexico relations with actions that take
place on one side of a teeter totter having direct consequence on the other side
7
.” The complications of
adobe-earthen installations funded by major art institutions with board of trustees that source capital in
often nefarious and capitalistic ways can be at odds with the intention of reclamation projects. Although
this tension exists, this long-standing reality is not only applied to Rael’s work, but the majority of Black,
Indigenous, immigrant artist practices often acquisitions for capital art markets, social capital focused on
climate and racial justice frameworks, alongside, other important hallmarkers like indefinite preservation,
collection maintenance, and prestigious recognition. The slow push for reparations and repatriations in
7
NDN Collective, Mobilizing an Indigenous Green New Deal, 2022
14
and outside of museums is another conversation outside the framework of this project, but its work is
important to note as many of these artists navigate the throws of art-washing and cultural placemaking
projects from such institutions. Rael’s ancestral connection to the Southwest region of Conejos, Colorado
is a personal one – he grew up in the surrounding area and has supported long-standing adobe projects
with local community elders like Crews and others. On the first day of our workshop, we were greeted by
Carole Crews, Joanna Keane Lopez, and Ronald Rael and began with a land acknowledgement
recognizing native Ute and Apache indigenous communities and the surrounding heritage border markers
of colonial violence and early separation of native families. Rael took us nearby to Conejos, just a five-
minute drive away from the workshop where we visited the Lafayette Head Home & Ute Indian Agency,
an adobe residence and indigenous family processing station constructed in 1855 where Catholic
Mexican missionaries separated native UTE families. Rael collaborated with artist Chip Thomas – who’s
worked in Navajo nation since 1987 – to install a public mural both inside and outside of the head home
adobe exterior to reveal and honor the documented native families who had been processed and separated
from their families at the Lafayette Head Home. Rael’s experimental earthen architectural practices
expand the significance of sustainable preservation and innovation through applications of 3-D mud
printers and other site-specific interventions including his “Casa Covida” mud printed rotunda-like
houses in Southern Colorado
8
.
Joanna Keane Lopez, New Mexico-based adobera and artist explores her relationship with her
family’s ancestral land in Lopezville, Socorro, New Mexico granted from a Spanish Land Grant awarded
to seventy families in 1815, and now abandoned but soon to be reacquired back by her. Lopez’s
“Lópezville, Socorro is a manta de techo, the dried branches of jediondia/creosote, and at least five
generations of remnants — shards of liquor bottles, barbed wire, and old cans — evidence of past
generations of López family members who made their lives on the same sprawling plot of land.”
9
In this
land-based, adobe-earthen exhibition, Lopez unearths the multi-generational relationships shared across
decades of ancestors through a make-shift recovery and reanimation of the abandoned materials and their
8
Rael San Fratello, Casa Covida, 2020.
9
Joanna Keane Lopez, Lopezville. (516 Arts). 2022.
15
direct relationship to the environmental toxicity of the space contaminated by radioactive materials and
depleted uranium from nearby mining sites. Lopez molds together a delicate personal portrayal of her
ancestral land as a site of environmental exploitation subjected to the malpractice of institutional failures.
Simultaneously, the project holds space for the tender creation of her family’s living legacy attributed to
both Latinx and indigenous communities surrounding Lopezville. Through this installation, Lopez deeply
addresses the ongoing harms and failures of environmental collapse through her ancestral site of
becoming. Lopez’s “Land Craft Theatre” exhibition held at SITE Santa Fe in 2021 explores her ongoing
relationships with fellow feminist adobera and enjarradoras – like Carole Crews and Helen Levine – in
New Mexico through earthen architectural form and clays responsive to the surrounding community.
Lopez’s site-specific intentional clays were sourced in Taos, New Mexico and Terlingua, Texas, and
shared by fellow adobero master Sandro Canovas based in Marfa, Texas. The reciprocity of clays
between adoberas and enjarradoras is an act of communal care and medicine, marked directly on the land
through the formation of adobe structures. Lopez’s ability to mend relationships across the Southwest
region is shown directly through her site-specific recognition of clays sourced and shared with her by
many elders.
16
R: Joanna Keane Lopez and Ronald Rael, Antonito, Colorado, August 2022. L: Plastering (I’m seen in black) an
adobe home in Antonito with Ronald Rael, Carole Crews, and other workshop participants.
17
Photo of the Lafayette Head Home & Ute Indian Agency with a mural by Chip Thomas commissioned by Ronald
Rael, August 2022, Conejos, CO. Courtesy of the artists.
18
R: Ronald Rael, inside Lafayette Head Home & Ute Indian Agency, Conejos, CO, May 2021, PBS, Photo by Kate
Perdoni. L:Inside view of the UTE Indian House with a mural by Chip Thomas, August 2022, Photo by Tracy Fenix.
19
Joanna Keane Lopez & Carole Crews, Alíz, Pigments & Finish Plaster workshop, August 2022, Antonito, Colorado
Joanna Keane Lopez & Carole Crews, Alíz, Pigments & Finish Plaster workshop, installation view, August 2022,
Antonito, Colorado. All photos courtesy of the artists.
20
Joanna Keane Lopez, Land Craft Theatre, exhibition installation, SITE Santa Fe, 2021. Photo by Brandon Soder.
21
Joanna Keane Lopez, Lópezville, Socorro, 516 ARTS, Adobe, dirt, wheelbarrow, shovel, screen, wooden forms,
creosote, manta de techo, liquor bottle shards, calcimine paint on adobe, tumbleweeds, archival photographs, maps
& documents, 2022. Courtesy of the artist.
22
Santa Fe and Taos:
I returned to Santa Fe’s Native American Art weekend in August 2022 to celebrate the 100th
anniversary of indigenous artists and leaders in New Mexico with my photographer friend and
collaborator, Cougar Vigil, currently the Outreach Coordinator at the Poeh Cultural Center. Vigil and I
met back at his indigenous exhibit, “Humble” co-curated with Eva Mayhabal Davis at the Bronx Art
Space in New York in 2018. Vigil had relocated back to his ancestral Apache homelands in New Mexico
during the early 2020 pandemic. I reconnected with Cougar in August, who guided me through the Poeh
Cultural Center and guided me through the Roxanne Swentzell Tower, a recent adobe exhibition space
addition made by the self-named prolific Santa Clara Tewa Native sculptor, artist and environmental
activist. Roxanna Swentzell founded the Flowering Tree Permaculture based in Espinola, NM where they
teach seed keeping, permaculture, and adobe-building and plastering skills. Swentzell built and
constructed the Gallery Tower made of adobe and micaceous plastering clay with support from
Flowering Tree Permaculture community members. The tower glistens upon first glance – the mica
illuminates the tower with such warmth and radiance. Mica is commonly applied to adobe structures and
homes throughout the New Mexico region, you can often see homes shine from a distance. The Swentzell
Tower invites local Tewa and New Mexico-based indigenous community artists to share their work in the
gallery space alongside her clay pottery work and drawings. Inside the Tower, there is an etching of the
Tewa Pueblo village revealing the inherent indigenous knowledge of caretaking and kinship through the
process of permaculture and adobe-building work. Since 2019, the Poeh Cultural Center has collaborated
with the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC for their “Di Wae Powa” reclamation project to return
indigenous Tewa pottery formerly held in the Smithsonian’s collection for over 100 years to the Pueblos
of Pojoaque, Nambe, San Ildefonso, Santa Clara, Ohkay Owingeh, and Tesuque communities
10
. In this
contemporary vision for museums to restore and return stolen indigenous and Black artworks and
artifacts, the Poeh Cultural Center represents a leading innovative indigenous vision and framework for
future cultural equity and restoration projects that center ancestral indigenous knowledge, skill-building,
and equitable, reparative museum collection acquisition policies and practices.
10
Poeh Cultural Center. Di Wae Powa, They Came Back. A repatriations initiative in partnership with the Smithsonian to return Pueblo
indigenous pottery and artifacts back to the community. 2019.
23
R: Roxanne Swentzell, clay pottery and etching on an adobe wall inside the Swentzell Tower Gallery at the Poeh
Cultural Center, August 2022. L: A photo documenting the outside of the Roxanne Swentzell Tower Gallery, an
adobe mica building, August 2022.
24
R: Cougar Vigil, (Apache) photographer and current Outreach Coordinator at the Poeh Cultural Center, August
2022. L: Photo of Cougar Vigil, artist, Camille Hoffman & myself outside near the Poeh Cultural Center, August
2022.
R: Photo of Roxanne Swentzell by Julien McRoberts. L: Jonathan Loretto (left) and Roxanne Swentzell (right),
photo referenced from their Bosque Botante interview by Daisy Quezada Ureña. Courtesy of the artists.
25
Adobe elders like Roxanne Sentzell have had long-standing collaborations with artists like Carole
Crews and younger artist generations including Daisy Quezada Ureña, a professor at the Institute of
American Indian Arts and multidisciplinary artist based in Santa Fe, working primarily in ceramic,
textiles, adobe, installation and social practice collaborative work focused on borderland investigations.
In 2020, Ureña interviewed Sentzell for her “Bosque Brontate” publication that highlights native and
Latinx artists and activists based in New Mexico collectively grappling with climate collapse through
collective power in land engagement and restoration. Ureña shares:
Bosque Brontate records the voices of collaborators from Tewa Women United, Cochiti Pueblo,
and San Agustín, Chihuahua, who were brought together to discuss ecological relationships that
are interlinked in the Rio Grande ecological zone. The emotional and intellectual bonds that link
these people and their regions touch on themes of rootedness, human imposed disparities,
historical records and traditions, and present actions towards restoration and awareness
11
.
Bosque highlights the inherent kinship that native and Latinx communities share with the Rio Grande in
Northern New Mexico. Brotante drives from “Xilxotla, formed by xilotl (baby corn or sweet corn), xochtli
(sprouting) and tla (abundance), which together translates as ‘where a lot of baby corn sprouts’ or an
abundance of new growth.” Bosque Brontate highlights the reciprocal “kincentricity” of Sentzell and
Ureñas evolving kinship and ecological reparative relationships to nurturing the rootedness of place,
ecology, and shared creation stories embodied in the lands of Pueblo, Apache, Diné, and Zuni tribes
throughout New Mexico.
11
Quezada Ureña, Bosque Brontate, 2021, 19-29.
26
R: Daisy Quezada Ureña, Brotante Bosque project, detailed book cover of amaranth – a native plant to New Mexico,
2021. Courtesy of the artist. L: Daisy Quezada Ureña, land-based installation, date unknown.
27
Santa Fe-born, Albuquerque-based artist Reyes Padilla opens up the possibility of directly
sourcing mica from his father’s backyard arroyo into abstract synesthesia paintings that inform the
rhythmic undertones embedded in the psycho-geographies
12
of the charged landscapes of New Mexico’s
geographical terrains that are lush with mica minerals that inform the cultural work of many land-based
and abstract artists. Padilla’s Synful Norteño paintings construct the tensions of hyper commodification of
Latinx and indigenous artists and the ongoing fight of self-preservation and creative autonomy for radical
futures outside of capitalistic art markets prevailing in global art towns like Santa Fe. Padillas’ use of
mica honors the ongoing kincintricy embedded through cultural and geographical kinship through
abstract form and sound that permeate both his childhood and contemporary framework for crafting
works rooted in regional site-specificity unbound to capital constructions of space. Padilla’s mica layered
on his paintings are sourced directly from his father’s backyard arroyos in Santa Fe. Padilla’s activation
of mica continues the ongoing ancestral connections with mica and their use on adobe buildings and now,
Synful Norteño artistic paintings. Padilla shared “When I learned how to create art with mica, I created
with the intention of reflecting on childhood. I’m in Albuquerque now, even though it’s not far from
Santa Fe, it feels way different. It’s pretty therapeutic to work with materials from where I grew up.
13
”
Reyes expands on these sentiments in his Synful Norteño poem embedded alongside his mica paintings
drawing the connectedness between storytelling, poetry, and kincintricity of shared relationships between
land and human relations in New Mexico.
12
Tate Museum, Psychogeography. Accessed May 1, 2022.
13
Padilla, interview by Tracy Fenix, October 2022.
28
Reyes Padilla, Synful Norteno painting and mica installation, August 2022, Albuquerque, NM.
29
“Synful Norteno” poem by Reyes Padilla
Realizations that I'm Prey to the Pursuit
A Synful Norteno with Farolito Feelings burning through
Confessions are costly, epiphanies worth more
These Cholla Scars won't fade cuz I've never looked at em' before
Puro turistas as I drip Parasol on the Gallery Steps
Canyon Road, first time, this is how dreams get
met Eyes cast judgment, labor man laying waste
Yet they push right past me to see my soul in place
Grew up feeling cornered, wasn't sure why
Fully developed hostility, I'm a local on the outside
Barrio cruisers, out of state plates
Adobe shopping while they're making me late
Féria en El Canón, Féria in the Dirt
Risking a scolding, so I can show you my worth
Now I'm running north daily, chasing anxieties
Dissecting the Chaos into painterly therapy
Self-righteousness concealed, commission striking us down
Who are we to be New Mexican in this old town
Too about the culture, not like in the
magazines Compromise the real, romanticized
fantasy Sinning in circles, the cycle won't end
Biting my tongue, the culture on trend
Protecting conflictions, unveiling my truth
Confessing Epiphanies, The Guilt is the Glue
30
Chapter Four: El Chuco: Queering the El Paso Borderland landscape:
El Paso, commonly known by locals as “El Chuco” derives from the term “pachuco” – a radical
Mexican person who wore zoot suits and listened to jazz during the 1930s era that originally emerged
from the city. El Chuco as place-based term opens possibilities of thinking through embodied queerness
in aestheticizing land, particular to El Paso’s charged histories related to borderland immigration and
violence. El Paso fronteriza artist, Jose Villalobos, grew up in the El Paso/ Juárez borderland and works
particularly around deconstructing the legacies of violence, harm, and traumas surrounding the
borderland. Villalobos shares, "I protest the toxicity of machismo through the use of objects that carry a
history, specifically within the Norteño culture, by deconstructing and altering them. Although new
forms are created. I demonstrate the battle between the acceptance of being maricón and assimilating to
cultural expectations."
14
Villalobos engages in disruptive earthen-based performances and installations
that deconstruct “maricon” realities of historic borderland violences like the brazeros project as seen in
his “de los otros” exhibit recently held at Artspace San Antonio that brought to light the homoerotic
nature and possibilities of gay love as shown through bunk beds that allude to the late night wonderings
that might have taken place during the Mexican Farm Labor Program in the 1940s. Villalobos and I are
both frontera queers raised in El Paso, Texas. Villablobos’ campy brazero earthen installations open up
and deepen the conversation around queering the colonial constructions of frontera landscapes along the
U.S/ Mexico border. The understanding of queer ecological landscapes in non-colonial frameworks are
representative of indigenous queer kinship and caretaking relationalities. Kim Tallbear shares caretaking
relations and kinship is a rejection of hierarchy of human and non-human relationships and embodies
deeply intimate relationships with land and community, disrupting settler colonialism in its indigenous
practices and methodologies
15
. Villalobos upholds queer kinship through his brazero earthen installations
and cathartic performances often using ropes, nopales, and barbed wires to re-create the tensions of
borderland crossing inflicted on the body. Villalobos’ playful performances and installations involve a
14
Villalobos, personal statement and reflections listed on his website.
15
Tallbear, K. (2019) Kinship Relations, Not American Dreaming, 24-28.
31
campy quality that coats the traumas of the U.S/ Mexico borderland. Recently, Villalobos gathered rustic
dust from the U.S/Mexico border wall and has sourced it as a paint to transform the intentionality of this
violent infrastructure occupying and separating families for multiple generations. Villalobos’ cathartic
nature to upend violent systems through queer performance and use of earthen materials invites
audiences to question their positionality to the land through a non-colonial framework wrapped around
sexual tensions and desires. Queering earthen materials and adobe architectures presents a possibility of
ecosexual desires of healing from a non-colonial gaze and intention of healing.
32
Jose Villalobos, De Los Otros, Installation, Artpace San Antonio, 2021. Courtesy of the artist.
33
Chapter Five: West Texas Glorified Art Rural Towns & Ancestral Lands
Accompanied by my sister and mom, we drove in late December 2022 from Los Angeles to our
rural homelands of Van Horn and Marfa, West Texas to deepen our personal connection and understanding
of my mom’s relationship to her childhood upbringing raised in a small, makeshift adobe home. My mom’s
artistic exploration in ceramic craftwork and passion for self-taught home construction projects stirred her
interest and imagination in supporting our family’s collective desire to reconnect with our historic
relationship to both the built environment and cultural landscape of adobe as a central point of indigenous
architectural knowledge in the regional area. My mom relocated from her adobe home into a larger home
later in her teens. When we arrived at her childhood adobe home, she could recall her intimate memories
of my grandparent’s inner psychological struggles of dealing with the residue of growing up in the Great
Depression era. The adobe home was visibly neglected and had been plastered over with chicken wire and
concrete. The entrance steps of the adobe home were the only area where the exposed adobe bricks could
be seen. It is a common preservation error to bond and plaster concrete and adobe together – they don’t
hold up well. Adobe is a living, breathing material that requires a delicate balance between caretakers who
nourish the walls with fresh plaster and airflow. Concrete hinders this caretaking relationship by sealing off
airflow – applying an ecologically harmful application to the natural earthen building. Applying concrete
on adobe towards preservation creates an ecological hazard that requires more embodied energy rather than
maintaining regular adobe plaster to the living structure that is ecologically sustainable. Unfortunately,
ancestral homeowners and families frequently neglect their adobe homes throughout the Southwest region.
Maintaining adobe is a communal and ancestral knowledge sharing process that requires intentional
generational care, diligent labor and skills, and rigorous time and effort, often challenged by systemic
issues regarding poor socio-economic conditions and lack of cultural preservation for indigenous and
Latinx elders who grapple with stable living conditions.
34
Portrait of my mom, Norma Jean, standing next to her childhood adobe home in Van Horn, rural West Texas,
December 2023, Photo by my sister, Alyssa Chandelle.
My mom’s childhood adobe home in Van Horn, West Texas, detail shot, December 2022. Photo by Alyssa
Chandelle.
35
We drove to Marfa on New Year's Eve to visit adobe maestro Sandro Canovas, who’s leading the “Adobe
is Political'' and “Protect Adobe'' campaigns throughout Presidio County (Marfa, Big Bend, and Ojinaga
area) in West Texas. Canovas references Ronald Rael as the first adobe architect to initiate the campaign.
Canovas later felt compelled to build up Rael’s political slogan through his own political actions in Marfa
to fight for the protection of adobe homes, particularly those built, owned, and maintained by multiple
generations of Mexican families throughout the region. Canovas, originally from Mexico City, moved to
Marfa in early 2006 to learn more adobe-building skills, and later met adobe architect, Simone Swan and
adobera elder Jesusita Jimenez, who taught Canovas how to master adobe-dome building and plastering
skills while working on restorations for the Swan House, a prestigious adobe vault and dome house built in
Presidio by Simone Swan in 1998. Canovas’ great-grandfather and grandfather owned brick factories in
Mexico City, influencing his direction in maintaining the kinship between earthen materials and ancestral
knowledge passed down through adobe building and preservation. Canovas, has gained feverous
momentum throughout the “Adobe is Political” campaign and has directed ongoing attention to questions
of the rapid capitalization of sustainable earthen architectures like adobe – inherently built by indigenous
and Mexican communities – in the West Texas rural area. The “Adobe is Political'' campaign raises critical
awareness of the rapid gentrification of adobe homes through Presidio County’s discriminatory taxation on
adobe-earthen structures built in the region – the tax rate increased by 57% for adobe earthen materials.
Canovas criticizes this harmful imposition: oftentimes, sustainable LEED housing projects receive tax
credits, instead, adobe homeowners in Presidio County receive scrutiny and tax penalization for natural
adobe building materials, threatening already resource-insecure communities of color who struggle to
maintain and upkeep their housing and, by extension, livelihoods. This earthen-adobe tax and
discriminatory policy points to a long-standing concern across architecture, preservation, planning, and
housing fields regarding a lack of standardization and protocols for ensuring the safety and feasibility of
earthen and adobe materials in construction projects. Earthen building standards and policies within the
U.S. vary widely due to different regional interpretations, thus allowing discriminatory tax practices like
36
37
those enacted in Marfa to persist. Fifth-generation Marfa resident, adobero and artist Miguel Mendias
greeted us alongside Canovas and offered reflections on their families long-standing history in the rural
town and their recent efforts to pay back taxes over $13,000 on their families’ historic adobe home located
on main street to maintain their cultural agency and kinship to their ancestral space. Mendias mentioned
their ongoing struggles between generational Mexican and indigenous residents and recent affluent white
settlers who’ve occupied, bought up, and flipped adobe homes for their personal benefit, and their
reluctance to share community skills, build community relationships, and restore connections with long-
standing, generational Mexican families. This persistence of rural gentrification demonstrates the country’s
long-standing lack of federal rural policies that support the well-being and cultural development of low-
income communities of color, particularly along borders where fraught immigration issues lead to
national dissonance. Mendias shares these sentiments and has supported Canovas’ 'Protect the Adobes”
campaign through both interpersonal and communal actions, particularly sharing their adobe residence
with Canovas. Mendias has devoted their artistic practice to embodying their ancestral grandmother’s
adobe home as an act of social sculpture mediated through indigenous care work and sustained kinship of
labor and community support. Mendias understands the power of communal actions and the necessity of
learning adobe-building and plastering through persistent, rigorous, hands-on learning from adobero
masters. The art of understanding adobe and earthen materials is through physical and sensual
understanding of touch applied directly to the stewardship of land. It is why I have invested over a year of
learning adobe plastering, brick-making, and clays in community with adobera masters – and still am at
the early stages of understanding. Mendias and Canovas have shared similar sentiments regarding the
necessity of learning adobe plastering and brick-making with adobe elders and artists throughout the
region. Canovas has worked on critical adobe restoration projects that focus on the history of Buffalo
Soldiers at Fort Davis – about 30 minutes from Marfa – and how it speaks to the fraught relationships of
Black Soldiers, violence to Apache communities, and settler colonial tensions that are embedded in the
adobe architecture of the region. Canovas believes in portraying the multifaceted truths of racial
inequities that hold trauma in the legacy of adobe preservation.
37
38
R: Defend the Adobe & Adobe es Politico Campaigns by Sandro Canovas in collaboration, wheatpaste in situ,
Marfa,Tx, 2020. L: Adobe maestro and activist, Sandro Canovas with Marfa-native artist & activist, Miguel
Matias, Dec 31, 2022.
38
The Chinati Foundation, an internationally recognized art institution founded by Donald Judd to
preserve his minimalist land art sculptures and collection and Ballroom Marfa, another contemporary art
institution, most recently exhibiting prolific artists like Rafa Esparza, have taken on adobe artistic
practices in their exhibitions and public program opportunities. In 2021, the Chinati Foundation received
a $1.2 million grant from Jack Dorsey’s #StartSmall fund to launch an “Adobe Apprenticeship Program”
to “recruit women from far West Texas communities'' for adobe restoration job training opportunities in
Marfa, as well as restore Judd’s “The Block,” an enclosed adobe wall to protect Judd’s personal archival
collection and ephemera
17
. The Block was constructed with found adobe bricks and plastered with
concrete, thus making it very challenging to maintain the earthen preservation due to the incompatibility
of the earthen and cement bonding. This structural issue is commonplace when adobe-earthen mixtures
are made improperly without guidance from adobe masters. A similar architectural preservation case
study can be found in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Freeman House, a Mayan Revival-style home located in Los
Angeles, built with a poor concrete mixture sourced from improperly sifted sand on location to form
indigenous-inspired textile blocks comprising the foundation of the home. Wright’s poor oversight of the
on-site architectural construction process begot perpetual structural issues of water damage and moisture
creating an unstable foundation, later further damaged by the 1994 Northridge Earthquake. The Ennis
house, like The Block, reveals an alarming disposition shared between white architects and
artists/institutions hyper-focused on appropriating earthen practices influenced directly from indigenous
aesthetics for artistic and architectural clout.
17
Donald Judd, The Block, Chinati Foundation.
39
Donald Judd, The Block, Marfa, Texas. Courtesy of the Chinati Foundation.
40
R: Photo of myself standing inside Frank Lloyd Wright’s Freeman House during a USC Heritage Conservation
Seminar tour, May 2022, Los Angeles, CA. L: Inside view of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Freeman House.
41
The Adobe Apprenticeship Program press release features well-established white panelists
skilled in adobe restoration and preservation expertise, but lacking intentional ancestral connections and
engagement with local well-known Mexican adobe masters like Sandro Canovas and other elders in the
region. Despite the Chinati Foundation’s attempts to bolster the adobe artistic economy through
mentorship and skill-building, it fails to build intergenerational forms of adobe stewardship with local
Brown, Mexican, and low-income adobe homeowners and adoberos. Some local Marfa participants and
residents – who remain anonymous to protect their safety, autonomy, and agency in a small town –
commented that the Apprenticeship Program had not taught proper adobe plastering skills to properly
restore adobe buildings in the area, but instead focused on maintaining the “Judd aesthetic” composed of
“concrete plastered on adobe” as seen on The Block. Adobe plastering requires earthen bonds to maintain
the structural integrity of the earthen building. Understanding the plastering and building process of
adobe is fundamental to ensuring the safety, preservation, and maintenance of adobe homes throughout
the region. To facilitate adobe training and not adequately build these basic skills could impose serious
challenges and harmful implications on those sheltered in adobe structures. The process of adobe-
building further requires and necessitates the deep understanding of land stewardship and mud plastering
guidance from local elder adobe-builders. The Chinati Foundation’s lack of due diligence to seek out the
elder, multi-generational families of brown and indigenous adobe-builders and adobe activists of color
reveals their priorities to maintain the status quo of white-dominated knowledge creation and facilitation,
thus undermining the integrity and inherent cultural regional knowledge embodied through earthen
architectures of the borderlands. The immense pressure of receiving high-level grant funding from
#StartSmall, a philanthropy organization created by Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter, further illuminates the
entangled new enterprise of tech money delving into the politics and gentrification of rural West Texas
communities like Van Horn, north of Marfa, and its similar infrastructural complications tied to Blue
Origin, a private spaceflight company owned by Jeff Bezos.
Ballroom Marfa, another prestigious art institution founded in 2003, hosts experimental
exhibitions and public programming, most notably working with artists like Rafa Esparza, a
42
multidisciplinary queer artist working primarily with adobe, performance, and installation. In 2017,
Ballroom Marfa collaborated with Esparza to curate “Tierra. Oro. Sange,” a collaborative exhibition
where he invited LA artist friends including Maria Maea, Carmen Argote, Nao Bustamante, Beatriz
Cortez, Timo Fahler, Eamon Ore-Giron, and Star Montana. Prior to Ballroom Marfa, Esparza exhibited at
the 2017 Whitney Biennial creating a rotunda adobe installation made with earthen bricks sourced from
the Los Angeles River with support from queer brown community artists. Esparza’s process is a
collaborative gestural nature that unfolds through earthen materiality and site-specific performances that
upend the settler colonial gaze enacted in the white gallery space. Following the Whitney Biennial,
Esparza shipped the adobe bricks to Ballroom Marfa for his “Tierra.Oro. Sangre” exhibition and briefly
worked with Sandro Canovas to create new adobe bricks for the show.
Esparza’s resourcefulness speaks to the ways of honoring the migratory pathways of immigrants
and shared realities of adobe homes and spaces. This transference of migrating adobe bricks from LA to
NYC then Marfa, Texas is emblematic of both the contemporary art world and post-colonial immigration
journeys that pivot social capital through the extension and re-interpretation of land art and earthen artists,
now elevated to this global recognition, that further, simultaneously, embraces Latinx and indigenous
leaders working with land-based, site-specific projects while still maintaining settler colonial policies and
enacted systemic oppressions with global institutions sourcing money from natural oil and toxic
environmental companies. The complications of land-based art and contemporary iterations of settler
colonialism are varied – it’s critical to address the art world’s quick-footed embrace of land-based
projects while untangling the lived realities of how settler colonialism seeps its roots into the practices
and policies of glorying rural towns and working brown communities like Marfa, Texas.
43
Rafa Esparza, Whitney Biennial, 2017. Courtesy of the artist and The Whitney Museum of American Art.
44
Rafa Esparza, Tierra. Oro. Sange, Ballroom Marfa, 2019. Courtesy of the artist.
Rafa Esparza and Eamon Ore-Giron. Talking Shit with Quetzalcoatl / I Like Mexico and Mexico Likes Me, 2017.
Wool. 76 x 94 inches, Tierra. Oro. Sange exhibit, Ballroom Marfa, 2019. Courtesy of the artists.
45
The prolific, vibrant Los Angeles cultural network surrounds the continuation of Rafa Esparza’s
artistic community. Esparza has collaborated extensively with Latinx and indigenous artists based in LA
and the broader Southwest region. Esparza’s ongoing adobe portrait paintings have featured iconic
Chicanx cultural makers and artists from South Central and East Los Angeles. Esparza’s recent
“Shattered Glass” acrylic on adobe painting captures queer Latinx men embracing and intimately kissing
each other while dancing cumbia in a nightclub setting presumably in Los Angeles, revealing the
underground queer kinship through earthen materiality seen in an affirming, loving queer gaze. Esparza’s
multidisciplinary practice has fostered collaborations with artists, including Gala Porras-Kim and Maria
Maea, who’s land-based practice is deeply rooted in decolonial practice lending itself to ancestral
connectedness to land stewardship in sculpture and experiential archival forms. The expansive network
of Esparza’s cultural reach has opened up space for other Latinx and queer artists of color to be seen as
they collectively ascend in the fraught, capitalist art market. Staying grounded in community, allows for
reciprocal kinship outside the constraints of capitalistic, voyeuristic consumers eager to fetishize brown,
indigenous, queer artists of color rising into their creative glory built on a foundation of ancestral
connectedness to their collective indigenous and diasporic homelands.
Rafa Esparza, Shattered Glass, 2021. Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles. Photo: Joshua White. Courtesy of the artist and
Commonwealth and Council.
46
The ethics of land art and earthen-adobe practices have garnered attention nationally and
internationally laying the foundation for more sustainable, funded opportunities for Latinx and indigenous
artists and adoberos. However, the ethics of how white and/or affluent settlers occupy and perpetuate
generational appropriation and inequities through taking on adobe-earthen projects with little to no
support and leadership of brown and native communities draws serious questions about harm and power
imbalances through reinforced master-laborer models of production, regardless of its embodied energy in
the re-engagement of earthen-adobe structures and homes. Building indigenous, earthen-adobe forms
without brown or native peoples re-iterates settler colonial dynamics. Comparatively, land artists like
Judd and Robert Smithson, sought out the wilderness to create non-art institutional sculptures that
glorified rural, deserted areas of the Southwest without indigenous consultation – reanimating the white
male experience of seeking new territories for one’s own desires, ambitions, and creative endeavors and
perpetuating settler colonial models. These extractive models still persist in recent creations like James
Turrell’s “Roden Crater” in the Painted Desert region of Northern Arizona set to open in 2024, and
Michael Heizer’s “The City” recently finalized from its laborious forty-year construction period based in
rural Nevada. Recently in a September 2022 Hyperallergic article, indigenous artists responded to
Heizer’s “The City” sharing their collective frustrations regarding ongoing exploitation of land and
indigenous cultural markers. Diné artist Raven Chacon shared, “This feeling that I get sometimes in
seeing ‘Double Negative’ is that it seems that there’s an impulse to extract or even destroy the land, and
with City now, there’s this choosing to mine the designs of Chichén Itzá and other Indigenous North
American sites,” noting both the cultural and ecological extraction of indigenous cultural ideologies and
territories.
18

18
Jasmine Liu. What Do Native Artists Think of Michael Heizer’s New Land Art Work? (Hyperallergic, 2022).
47
James Turrell, Roden Crater, ©2023 Skystone Foundation; all images © James Turrell.
Michael Heizer, “45°, 90°, 180°,” City (© Michael Heizer; photo by Ben Blackwell, courtesy Triple Aught Foundation).
48
Similarly, Alicia Harris, an Assiniboine professor of Native American art history at the University of
Oklahoma, shared, “There’s money involved and there are systems and governments involved to make it.
It’s a misdirect from the real history of that place, and the meaning and kinships that people have built
there over millennia
19
.” The distinction between land artists, ecoartists and adobe-earthen artists sits
differently depending on the intentionality of land practice engagement, cultural indigenous identities
aligned within proximity to borderland expressions, wealth distribution and class analysis, generational
distinctions, and relationality and community engagement ethos and sustained trust. When I met with
Dan Baez, Creative Director at the Van Horn Advocate, we shared ambiguous, yet slightly resentful
sentiments about growing up near Marfa and not understanding the global familiarity or weight of Judd’s
growing legacy at that time until we both attended college. While passing through Marfa for family
travels to the Ojinaga border entry as a kid, Baez had mistakenly assumed Judd’s sculptural works were
simply abandoned Department of Transportation Road barricades. There was no community engagement
or correspondence from the Chinati Foundation to its brown residents in Marfa or nearby towns like
Alpine and Van Horn, Texas. During Rafa Esparza’s Ballroom Marfa exhibition he noted this cultural
dissonance, “Marfa has a large Latino population, yet when I came here, I was taken around to see the
sites, I toured Chinati, and it wasn’t any different from anything I’d seen in Los Angeles or New York—
it was just more of the same lack of diversity in art institutions.” Following his MFA graduate studies at
the University of North Texas, Baez returned to Van Horn and has been steadily making strides to
provide culturally inclusive programming and museum engagement for the Latino-dominant
communities at the Historic Clark Museum in town and hopes to rigorously engage equitable funding
from Blue Origin to restore cultural and city infrastructures in Van Horn. Notably, the ongoing tensions
of Blue Origin tech workers in Van Horn have stirred tensions among residents noting the increase in
housing costs and the lack of proper clean water. In 2020, the Van Horn Advocate wrote an op-ed to Jeff
Bezos requesting infrastructure support to fix the sewage, septic and rusty water pipelines for residents of
Van Horn. This request went unacknowledged despite multiple boil water advisories that have recently
19
Alicia Harris, Homescapes: Indigenous Land Art and Public Memory. (University of Oklahoma, 2020)
49
affected long-term residents and Blue Origin workers. The inherent ties of land, art practice, housing,
environmental racism and ethical treatment entangle and directly impact local politics and housing
dilemmas within communities like Marfa.
Chapter Six: Cultural Preservation of Adobe Mexican Histories in Tucson:
While driving back to Los Angeles, I met up with Dr. Lydia Otero, a non-binary Chicana
historian of Apache descent who focuses on Latinx urbanization, placemaking, and most recently,
preserving queer cultural legacies and adobe architectural histories of Mexican communities in Tucson,
Arizona. Dr. Otero and I met on January 3rd, in front of the Tucson Museum of Art to walk through the
historic Mexican community of Barrio Viejo. We walked past the earliest documented adobe building
“La Casa Cordova” believed to be constructed prior to the Gadsden Purchase (1853-54), an agreement
between the settler U.S and Mexico to pay Mexico for areas that covered and later became contemporary
Arizona and New Mexico. Dr. Otero talked about her earliest lived experiences growing up in an adobe
home in Barrio Viejo that was later demolished to build the interstate due to eminent public domain
during the 1960-70s. Dr. Otero has diligently worked to ensure that the historic neighborhood including
an area called “La Placita Luminarias” would be preserved and acknowledged in a permanent art
commissioned “Candelera'' sculpture designed by Cuadro Design, that inscribes all former Mexican
family residents and businesses who previously lived and worked in the historic adobe district
20
. Dr.Otero
described the neighborhood as a once thriving, festive, shared communal market space for Latinx and
Asian communities to exchange meals and engage in other social experiences that embraced and nurtured
the families who labored to build Tucson. Dr. Otero worked collaboratively with indigenous and Asian
communities to document the lived intersectional borderland realities of historically oppressed
communities that have experienced ongoing issues with immigration, resource scarcity, environmental
racism, and displacement from systemic redlining in Tucson. Dr. Otero’s recollection of their childhood
neighborhood sets the tone – like many faced with forced displacement – for their devoted dedication to
preserving what remains of their ancestral connection to the historic adobe landscape. Recently, Dr.
Otero worked with community developers in hopes to hold community builders accountable to build
equitable housing and preserve
20
Cuadro Design in partnership with the Historical Society of Tucson to honor the erasure of Mexican histories.
50
the ancestral adobe remnants of the historic Mexican neighborhood in their community housing designs. At
sunset, we walked through Barrio Viejo where Dr. Otero shared more about holding contemporary
developers accountable by collaborating with them in order to ensure the preservation of standing Mexican
cultural heritage markers including “La Placita” and the installation of an outdoor archival photo mural
documenting images of the historic Mexican neighborhood along the contemporary building walls. Dr.
Otero’s work represents the importance of safekeeping indigenous and Latinx elder knowledge and
memory caretaking through sustained kinship of land embodied in the built environment.
Dr. Otero’s cultural work tied to the land is a recollection of preserving the ancestral heritage of
indigenous and immigrant communities through ongoing collaborations that entail discussing forms of
ethics around preservation of indigenous and Latinx memory work through contemporary architectural
forms. While engaging indigenous futures through a radical queer preservationist lens, we can reclaim,
reconstruct, and redefine the possibilities of creating sustainable infrastructures through cultural
frameworks in the built environment. The ongoing relationship between adobe architectures in historic
and contemporary conversations are perpetually challenged through self-perceptions, site-specificity,
historical constructions of settler colonialism and its contemporary constructions of gentrification, and
the possibilities of queer and indigenous futures through interrogations of the archive and its ongoing
relationship to the imagined and built environments of home and shared communal gathering spaces.
51
52
L: Dr. Lydia Otero in the historic district of Barrio Viejo standing next to the “Candelera” art installation,
January 3, 2023. R: Dr. Lydia Otero’s childhood adobe home referenced from “In the Shadows of the
Freeway,” book, 2019.
52
Chapter Seven: Embodied Archives & Activating Ancestral Indigeneity in California:
The construction of adobe and the built environment of settler colonialism was constructed
through the settler colonial Spanish mission system on indigenous territories, particularly, focused on
Ohlone territories, now present-day Bakersfield, California. The construction of adobes built during
Spanish colonial era enforced generations of indigenous Chumash and Chalon native territories subjected
to systemic violence, cultural erasure and genocide, and the forced removal of land and cultural
knowledge in the guise of white settler savior Catholicism. Christine Howard Sandoval, a
multidisciplinary artist born in Bakersfield, California works primarily with adobe-earthen materials and
archives that re-visits, pays homage, and honors narratives of her Chalon ancestors through
deconstructing the Missionary system in California and built adobe architecture and form through
archival investigations
21
. Sandoval’s Chalon ancestors were captured and imprisoned in the mission
during the mission era from 1769 until about 1833, then migrated to San Luis Obispo, then to
Bakersfield. For Sandoval’s ICA San Diego “Coming Home” exhibit in 2021, she created an interactive,
video piece, Niniwas, that documents her re-visit to the Missions, pairing the site of the mission as both a
living archive and a site of Indigenous futurism. Sandoval likens the scholarly work of Deborah Miranda
(Esslen/ Chumash), and her personal portrayal in Bad Indians of adobe missionaries and their lived
kinship and deeply rooted connection to the violence enacted to the land and by extension indigenous
communities
22
. Sandoval’s connected kinship with Miranda is through their critical interrogation of
California mission systems, particularly focused on Mission Soledad, where she documented and
retraced her ancestral descendants. Sandoval shares the importance of the embodied archives in earthen
mounds and other adobe architectures reflected vis-a-vis Miranda’s poetic ancestral storytelling
dialogues. Sandoval shared with me in our interview:
…And so [Deborah Miranda] she writes back to her ancestors and has this kind of back and forth
conversation through the archive. And it's really amazing. I started thinking about the possibility
nd the practice of doing that in my own work and through the material itself, that the material
21
Sandoval, IC San Diego, November 2021
22
Miranda, D. (2012). Bad Indians, Hayday Press.
53
actually holds objects that hold seeds. It holds bits of bone. It holds fingerprints. It holds traces of
our ancestors' bodies and labor. It probably holds echoes of sound and time. And all of that is
being kind of encapsulated, encapsulated in this form of the brick. And the bricks are literally
melting back into the ground because that's what they do. They're always meant to go back to the
ground. I think it's the truest monument, you know, because it is literally not meant to last. I think
if indigenous people had a monument, it would be made out of the earth and probably would be
made to go back to the earth. It's like our mound, basically. I started thinking about these facades
at the missions as not only a colonial structure but also an artistic manifestation of my ancestors,
that these were sculptures, actually, that they hold creative and incredible knowledge
23
.
Sandoval’s “Document Mounds- Application for Enrollment with the Indians of the State of California
Under The Act of May 28, 1928” presents alternative radical monuments that synchronize the legacies of
trauma embodied simultaneously in adobe architecture and redacted documentation forms of her
ancestors. Sandoval’s “Document Mounds” were formed by “...collecting the adobe-covered masking
tape in a pile, the archive naturally assumes the forms of the mound. The mounds become
personifications; entities that navigate a history of surveillance, land surveying, incarceration, excavation,
and erasure as they strive for the endurance and protection of their place in the land
24
.” Sandoval mends
together radically alternative mapping and preservation techniques rooted in historical adobe forms and
ancestral knowledge, portraying the horrific unveiling of colonization through the powerful gaze of her
own journey reconnecting with her Ohlone ancestry.
23
Sandoval, interview with Tracy Fenix, October 2022
24
Sandoval, IC San Diego, October 2021.
54
55
Christine Howard Sandoval, Document Mounds- Application for Enrollment with the Indians of the State of
California Under The Act of May 28, 1928, 2021. Courtesy of the artist.
Christine Howard Sandoval, archival, for Rosario Cooper and my 10 year old self, 2021. Courtesy of the artist.
55
Located near Bakersfield, I turn to San Luis Obispo to focus particularly on the first settler
colonial ship landing of Philippine settlers documenting their first step on Chumash lands on the historic
date of October 18, 1587. Camille Hoffman, a Phillipina-Jewish artist based in New York who works
closely in New Mexico and California presented an interactive land-based exhibition, “See and Missed,”
at San Luis Obispo Museum of Art examining the fraught histories of the first-landing of Philippine
settlers and their relations with Chumash peoples in California. I first met Hoffman (now a dear friend) in
2016 while working at Wave Hill, wherein she later exhibited “Here We Land” in 2019. The exhibition
documented the works of three artists – Hoffman, Maria Hupfield and Sara Jimenez – grappling with
settler colonial tensions, borderland crossings, and indigenous relations inflicted with legacies of trauma.
In August 2022, I reconnected with Hoffman in Santa Fe to witness her “Motherlands” interactive
exhibition at Form and Concept Gallery that animated and interrogated the layered landscape
compositions that make up both the New Mexican landscape and her ancestral Philippine lands,
culminating in an exploration of decolonial, hyper-romanticized photographic depictions of her childhood
growing up in both places. Hoffman’s interdisciplinary practices weave together her ancestry and
indigenous relations through site-specific intentionality of embedding Lenape, Chumash, and Diné
histories into her immersive installations humanizing the traumatic wounds marked on the land, body and
spirit comprising these communities. Hoffman’s soft glowing installations have a profound subtlety that
invites viewers into a mesmerizing landscape that tenderly bites the cathartic realities onto the observers’
reality awakening them to the brutality of post-colonial truths. Hoffman’s “See and Missed” exhibition
25

offered viewers the ability to reconnect with a long-lost truth that is critical to addressing the multi-
narratives that made up colonial settlers outside of the British and Spanish empires, further complicating
the perception of colonial settler relations documented on the West Coast. Attending to how early
immigration and first settler experiences initiated the beginnings off borderland demarcations illuminates
how borders were conceived and altered over time by transitions in colonial powers throughout the settler
United States.
25
Hoffman, See and Missed, San Luis Obispo Museum, May 2022
56
Camille Hoffman, See and Missed, San Luis Obispo Museum, August 2022. Photo by Stephen Heraldo, 2022.
Courtesy of the artist.
57
L: Camille Hoffman, MOTHERLANDS, exhibition installation, August 2022. R: Detail installation photo of
Camille’s mother, Melinda Hoffman’s self-portrait documenting her pregnancy with Camille while in New Mexico,
featured in the MOTHERLANDS installation.
58
Born and raised in the San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles-based documentarian and artist, Arlene
Mejorado, has ancestral indigenous roots in Guadalajara, Mexico. Mejorado’s transborder
interdisciplinary practice engages critical documentation that interrogates colonial constructions through
materiality of site and place and upends fragmented truths through counterwork that engages in repair
work in diasporic and displaced, particularly highlighting queer and trans communities. Mejorado's work
is guided in practice by Toni Morrison’s “The Site of Memory” that redefines truth through spiritual,
intergenerational connections embedded in archives and documentation of a site of ancestral significance.
Mejorado shares, “We associate our photographs with our own survival and often they do outlive us,
which is the objective after all: they are like dispatches for the future. Drawing threads together, we try to
pull a less opaque and unfiltered reflection of ourselves, piecing fragments and filing the gaps of absent
information
26
.” Mejorado’s recent project, “Desterrando Archivos,” explores her relationality to site and
place as memory through archival photographs often taken through self-portraiture; in one photo she
delicately holds an archival photograph in reflection of her grandmother’s adobe home in Guadalajara,
where many of her family members were born and raised prior to migrating to Southern California.
Mejorado describes her grandmother’s home as “A House as Acatl” to honor the “acatl” spirit that takes
shape in the materiality of the adobe home and umbilical chords of all relatives who were born in the
home, an indigenous practice to the region. Mejorado describes “A House as Acatl” through an active
relationship connecting embodied archives as an alternative, speculative future practice working in
ancestral earthen form as such:
In Nahuatl an acatl is a hollow reed that represents a life energy, an inner shadow. The acatl
teaches us that hollowness is substance, not emptiness or vacancy but a vessel for knowledge,
wisdom, potential, and aspiration. There is an incompleteness in our personal stories, a
disjointment of narratives and an ensemble of scattered memories that offer historical foundation
but also more gaps and more questions. It is in the gaps where speculation and possibility
emerge…Burying a belly button was like planting a tree. There is no material record of our past
26
Arlene Mejorado. A House as Acatl. (Aztlan, 2022), 245-251
59
family rituals such as this one. It’s an indigenous tradition in west-central Mexico to bury the
detached, umbilical cord of a newborn in the home in order to rot the child to the land, to their
culture, and to their community.
27

The engagement of connecting embodied memory work and ancestral spirit through the materiality of the
land opens up possibilities for reconciliation, connectedness of site-specific rooting for displaced
indigenous communities, and reparative work that rewires indigenous knowledge into the hands of future
Latinx and indigenous generations. Mejorado’s rootedness to ancestral Nahuatl spiritual creation stories
draws upon the vast network of indigenous communities who see the spirit taking form through
rootedness directly with their native lands. Adobe-earthen practices comes from a long ancestral lineage
across the Southwest and Mexican regions, and thus, should rightfully assume the caretaker position
outside the reigns of colonial settler contemporary constructions of land stewardship and white land
artists that have historically appropriated indigeneity in artistic form, neglecting consent or consultation
from indigenous cultural workers communities.
Arlene Mejorado, Desterrando Archivos, family portrait at her grandmother’s adobe ancestral home, June 2022.
Courtesy of the artist.
27
Arlene Mejorado. A House as Acatl. (Aztlan, 2022), 245-251.
60
Arlene Mejorado, Desterrando Archivos, 2022
61
Drawing from ancestral connections of Chumash and Tongva peoples, histories embedded in
the contemporary settler colonial environment, William Camargo, a photographer based in Anaheim, CA,
captures entangled historic oppressions and contentious labor harms inflicted on Chicanx and Latinx
communities in historically traumatic spaces oftentimes documented as negative heritage. Camargo’s
“Origins & Displacement” series explores these contemporary issues of gentrification and settler
colonialism in the built environment by posting up cardboard signs that intentionally point out the historic
harms and failures of governmental infrastructures and systemic oppressions, notably documented
throughout Anaheim, CA and Orange County. Camargo’s “ In All That I Can Carry” series presents a
radical departure from classical portraiture activating a rasquache self-documentation that examines his
positionality in site-specific Southern California homespaces by engaging archival materials through use
of makeshift, found household everyday object embodied installations. By engaging use of common
Latinx household objects like pinto beans, woven basket chairs, and mops situated on his head as a wig,
the installation likens rasquache aesthetics as central features of ones’ embodied experience of the built
landscape specific to Southern California. Camargo’s land-based documentation projects reclaim and
assert control over the colonized gaze presented throughout Orange County and Southern California
region. Through the use of embodied archives in historically traumatic, colonized spaces that have
infringed harm to Black, Mexican and Tongva peoples, Camargo directly confronts this unseen
communal pain and erasure by creating an alternative narrative that asserts Chicanx autonomy.
62
William Camargo, Ya'll Forget Who Worked Here?, Origins & Displacements series, 2020. Courtesy of the artist.
63
William Camargo, All That I Can Carry #2, 2020. Courtesy of the artist.
64
Ozzie Juarez, Los Angeles South Central artist and founder of Tlaloc Studios, an artist-run
community gallery and studio building in the historic neighborhood of South Central. Juarez started
Tlaloc Studios in early 2021 during the Covid pandemic to promote and support local Black, Chicano,
and Latinx artists throughout Los Angeles. Juarez discusses the importance of creative reciprocity
through the Aztec god creation story of Tlaloc:
Tlaloc is one of the most ancient and widespread deities in all of Mesoamerica. Ruler of the rain
and lighting, Tlaloc brought fertility and abundance to the crops and people. He is referred to as
“The Provider” and giver of life. I want to spread that same philosophy and provide a sanctuary
for artists in my community to thrive. I want to be more like him, to give back, and to water
people’s crops to help them get a bigger harvest
28
.
Similarly, Juarez works through these mesoamerican Aztec origin stories through exploring indigenous
futurisms referencing pre-Colombian manuscripts, contemporary cartoons like Goku, and graffiti styles
imposed throughout LA murals. Juarez explores the experimental use of earthen molds to his painterly
style applied on a store awning, car camper shell, and makeshift canvases notably seen in his recent
“Debajo” exhibit at Ochi Projects back in August 2022. Juarez’s unveiling of “Portal de Tlaloc” is a
ceremonious gesture of unifying mundane, commonplace urban architectures rooted in South Central
with the pairing of indigenous futures through a portrayal of indigenous creation stories that inform the
making of many Chicanos and Mexican indigenous communities in Los Angeles. Juarez holds space for
the prolific, playful storytelling of mural mark marking and traditional ancestral forms embedded within
indigenous archival text and transforms its origins with the use of contemporary cartoons to create a
fantastical alternative reality of indigenous futures outside of the influence of colonialism. Through
Juarez’s steadfast community-based curatorial approach, ongoing diligence and integrity to build creative
autonomous spaces for Black and brown communities at Tlaloc Studios, he upholds the vision of Tlaloc
both rooted through magnificent storytelling embedded in architectural form in the built environment and
his intentions to root abundance in his South Central community.
28
Ozzie Juarez, A Bigger Harvest. (AJ Jirard, Juxtapoz, 2022)
65
Ozzie Juarez, Portal de Tlaloc (2022), Water-based enamel, acrylic, spray paint, and earth on canvas, awning, and
lights, 120 x 144 x 36 in. Courtesy of the artist and Ochi Projects, LA.
Tlaloc Studios, Hyperallergic, March 26, 2021, photo by Jorge Cortez.
66
Carlos Jaramillo, a Los Angeles-based photographer born in McAllen, Texas collaborated with a
team of indigenous and Latinx cultural makers to produce “Tokala” a BIPOC-led climate change project
documenting indigenous youth across the U.S., particularly, focused on Los Angeles-based water and
housing crisis projects organized by Chicanx and indigenous youth in Southern California. Jaramillo
collaborated with creative director Marcus Correo, along with filmmaker Jazmin Garcia and the nonprofit
Future Coalition’s Youth Direct Action Fund manager Thomas Lopez to pitch these documentary and
film projects for Vogue’s Climate Justice campaign. As shared on Vogue’s website, “Tokala” is derived
from the historical Tokala (Kit Fox) Society of the Lakota tribe, a group of warriors who showed bravery
and leadership from a young age. In the new photography project, which is published exclusively in
Vogue, the team set out to find present-day youth who are proving to be leaders in their respective
communities.” Together, they highlighted the radical indigenous grassroots activism of Atlakatl Ce
Tochtli Orozco, who organized protests in El Sereno in May 2020 “when a handful of families—many of
whom were homeless or housing-insecure—became overwhelmed by rising rents and a lack of accessible
housing options. Unable to find shelters that would accommodate them, they began moving into the
vacant Caltrans-owned homes. The El Sereno Community Land Trust, led by over 30 community
activists including Orozco, also offers visions and proposals for how to move forward, including the
creation of 252 affordable rental housing units
29
.” Jaramillo’s collaborative Tokala land-based photo
project illustrates the importance of capturing intergenerational immigrant and indigenous-led narratives
around land stewardship, kinship, and collective actions in the fight against capitalist exploitation and
ecological destruction. Vogue’s sponsorship of Jaramillo’s Tokala series sets at odds the hyper-global
capitalist market audience with the tensions of the looming post-capitalist climate crises directly
impacting indigenous and immigrant communities in First Nation sacrifice zones and Global South
indigenous communities. Similar to Rael and Esparza’s artistic engagements with global institutions, the
shift to highlight brown and indigenous artists on prestigious platforms strife with oppressive boards
brings to question Vogue’s long-term impact towards action and progressive climate justice policy
change outside of social clout and prestige
29
Christian Allaire, A New Series, “Tokala,” Spotlights BIPOC Youth Climate Activists. (Vogue 2022).
67
R: Carlos Jaramillo, Atlakatl Ce Tochtli Orozco, Tokala series, originally published in Vogue, 2022.
L: Carlos Jaramillo, El Sereno Garden maintained by Atlakatl Ce Tochtli Orozco, Tokala series, 2022.
68
Carlos Jaramillo, El Sereno, Tokala series, 2022, published originally in Vogue, 2020. Courtesy of the artist.
69
Chapter Eight: Latinx & Indigenous Futures in the Land Back Movement:
Restoration, repatriation, and reclamation of land are critical to land-based and adobe-earthen
cultural practices rooted in ancestral knowledge site-specific to indigenous and Latinx communities. The
Land Back Movement is a radical call to action that is informed by rigorous progressive policy changes
that assert indigenous self-autonomy, collective agency, and cultural liberation rooted in ecological
kinship and spiritual restoration. Nani Chacon (Diné/ Chicana) a New Mexico-based is a prolific mural
artist who has collaborated across the Southwest to paint murals dedicated to honoring Diné creation
myth stories in public spaces – reclaiming the public historical narrative through indigenous storytelling
in the built environment and space. Chacon’s “SPECTRUM” exhibit at SITE Santa Fe culminated in a
revealing of 10 large-scale paintings and a survey of her public murals in Arizona and New Mexico.
Chacon’s vision sets the tone for illuminating radical indigenous futures and reclamation of public spaces
during the Land Back Movement, particularly located in the politically charged borderland community.
Chacon’s work offers possibilities for other indigenous and communities of color to reclaim histories
through a re-telling of creation stories embodied in the landscape of their communities and the rightful
intention to act on that radical retelling for self-preservation, agency, and autonomy.
In light of presenting radical indigenous futures in the built environment through honoring
indigenous creation stories, land kinship, and communal relationships across the indigenous community,
Nativo Lodge, based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, amplifies transformative indigenous artistic practices
and voices through its mural art rooms designed by indigenous artists and cultural community
partnerships with Institute of American Indian Arts. Several indigenous artists including Nani Chacon
have designed guest artist rooms at Nativo Lodge. This intersectional emphasis on reclaiming indigeneity
through its own self-autonomy and collective agency in the built environment offers a future possibility
and prototype for potential reclamation in land-based projects, particularly during this Land Back
movement.
70
R: Nani Chacon,THE FIRST CREATURES TO HOLD THE KNOWLEDGE OF EVERY WORLD, 2022, SITE
Santa Fe, August 2022. Courtesy of the artist. L: Nativo Lodge, an indigenous artist hotel with a mural by Michael
Toya, a Jemez Pueblo artist, Albuquerque, NM, August 2022.
71
Chapter Nine: Mapping “Mud Kin” via GIS Storytelling
Inspired by Muscogee (Creek) Poet Laureate, Joy Harjo’s “Living Nations, Living Worlds: A
Map of the First Peoples Poetry,'' an interactive ArchGIS Story Map and audio collection developed by
the Library of Congress, I drew inspiration from the collective strength in realizing a radically alternative
map that prioritizes indigenous narratives through alternative mapmaking strategies like poetry,
storytelling, and other forms of marking non-linear time. For this project, Harjo had collaborated with 47
poets across turtle island to showcase the immensely powerful creative strength across intergenerational
indigenous networks that honored territories through themes of place, displacement, visibility,
persistence, resistance, and acknowledgement shared in native circles. Joy Harjo shares the intentions of
the project to illuminate native voices through non-western constructions of space embodied with
indigenous ways of marking time in community:
Some of the earliest indigenous maps of North America were not drawn. The placement and
orientation of a village, its buildings, and even mound structures were markers that mirrored the
meaning of the heavens, or other directional senses. We mapped with weaving, baskets, and in
songs. We carry many kinds of maps in our poems. We still do, even as we rely on maps of the
newest technologies, like the GPS we carry in our phones…I want this map to counter
damaging false assumptions—that indigenous peoples of our country are often invisible or are
not seen as human…The mapmaking represented by this map comes at a crucial time in history,
a time in which the failures to acknowledge, listen, and to consider everyone when making the
map of American memory has brought us to reckoning
30
.
Back in September 2022, I had the immense privilege and opportunity to share time with Harjo during
USC Roski’s “Live Artists Live: Songs of Freedom” Conference co-moderated by Professors Jenny Lin
and Chris Finley. Following her keynote speech, I asked Harjo about the creation process and
importance of organizing this interactive, collaborative map with native poets across Turtle Island
(contemporary settler United States), and she responded that it was her creative responsibility to
30
Library of Congress, Joy Harjo, 2020.
72
reciprocate elder knowledge and build kinship across native tribes and territories, particularly to
strengthen tribal unity and affirm creative indigenous autonomy outside of the western, settler colonial
gaze and constructions of map making. Harjo had highly recommended that more site-specific maps be
brought forward following her work, and that she had intended “Living Nations” would set in motion for
other indigenous and communities of color to follow suit with similar mapping projects that emphasize
site-specific indigenous and marginalized histories across the settler U.S. Through Harjo’s transformative
vision and with research inspiration from USC Professor Annette Kim’s critical cartography work, I
worked towards building up this ongoing “Mud Kin” mapping project in hopes of honoring and
strengthening the interconnectedness across land-based, earthen, and adobe artists and activists working
and researching across the Southwest borderlands region.
My culminating thesis research presented here serves as a critical foundation for fueling the
intentional, site-specificity of the “Mud Kin'' interactive ArchGIS Story Map. Due to the ongoing
environmental crisis and ever evolving climate conditions facing generations ahead, I intend for this
“Mud Kin'' mapping project to continue ongoing documentation of intergenerational voices engaged with
experimental, radical forms of sovereignty rooted in land-based, adobe-earthen practices, advocacy,
preservation, and remediation across the Southwest and Americas. Lastly, this project primarily focuses
on expanding the historical and contemporary relationship that Latinx and indigenous cultural workers,
artists, and activists share with each other while engaging land-based work and adobe practices across
the Southwest region with the primary goal of expanding and strengthening the activist, grassroots
network through a curatorial and preservation framework. In light of chaos, we find strength embodied
through our kinship directly reciprocated with the lands that greet, nourish, and sustain us. I hope this
mapping project illuminates the intentional care brought forward to reclaim space, places, and indigenous
and Latinx histories rooted in mud kinship through built, natural, and imagined environments across the
Southwest regions from Southern California to West Texas.
73
Tracy Fenix, Mud Kin: A Southwest land-based mapping project on contemporary Latinx and indigenous artists
working with adobe-earthen practices along the borderlands, ArchGIS StoryMap, prototype, February 2023.
74
Glossary: Adobe Terms & Uses:
Glossary informed by Lola Ben-Alon, Carole Crews, Ronald Rael, and Enrique Madrid.
Adobe
Adobe, as mud brick is more commonly known, is a Spanish word whose origins are from the
Arabic al-tuba, “the brick,” which came from the Coptic tobe, and from Egyptian dbt, meaning
“brick.” Sun-dried brick used to build earthen building structures, commonly in dry or high
desert throughout the Southwest. About a third and a half of the world’s population—
approximately three billion people on six continents— lives in buildings constructed of earth or
adobe.
Adobera/o
A community-recognized adobe builder, oftentimes a master elder who maintains the
construction and cultural preservation of adobe buildings.
Rammed Earth
The process of gathering site-specific soils and clays to build human-made layered earthen
structures.
Compressed Earth Block (CEB)
Eighteenth century architect François Cointeraux developed the first modern CEB mechanical
press to construct faster, larger rammed earth bricks. CEB’s contemporary industrial use is seen
as controversial by community adobe-builders and environmentalists because it minimizes the
cultural integrity of adoberos’ ancestral work and requires more embodied energy and
carbon-dioxide outputs. CEB is a faster way of constructing earthen structures, but its embodied
ecological energy and impact is more significant and ecologically costly than adobe buildings.
Cob
The simplest earth-building form composed of compiled, molded mud with heavy amounts of
straw to maintain structure integrity with little to no tools – a trowel and pitchfork may be used –
involved in the construction process.
Enjarre / Plaster
The process of plastering mud mixed with lime, nopales or another natural bonding agent
applied on adobe buildings as a recurring restoration process. Oftentimes, applying plaster
encourages the involvement of multiple community or family members in the restoration
process.
75
Embodied energy
“Embodied energy is one of the key factors used to assess the sustainability of a construction
material or product. Sustainable materials and products have low levels of embodied energy. A
material that is locally sourced and is relatively un-processed will have a low level of embodied
energy. Materials that have high levels of embodied energy are generally not sustainable and
should be avoided where possible.”
Aliz
Aliz is a clay slurry that is washed over plastered adobe with a sponge to seal any cracks and
protect the exterior.
Mica
Mica is a flat shimmery mineral found in arroyo beds and other specific geological regional sites
like New Mexico and often applied to adobe homes and structures throughout the Southwest
regional area.
Zoquete – (Nahuatl: zoquitl) mud
76
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Camille 80
Mud Kin interview with Sandro Canovas by Tracy Fenix, January 8, 2023.
Tracy Fenix [00:00:04] Can you introduce yourself and your current practice along the
West Texas borderland area?
Sandro Canovas [00:00:49] Yes. My name is Sandro Canova and I'm 50 years old. I was
born and raised in Mexico City and I have worked with I'll go away and do projects around
the of a tradition in the region of La Quinta, La Rios in West Texas, and on the Chihuahua
side since 2003. And currently that's how I make a living with the restoration of the houses.
And whenever there's an opportunity to build a house, which hasn't happened since before the
pandemic, because the economic strains that people have had, we do that. But mostly is our
restorations. Our 2 to 3 last projects were approved, although with a couple of other
structures. The military fort in Fort Davis and the one that we're doing right now, it's a house
built by three months one and his see document is back in 2003. I feel very lucky because it's
a house that has a dome and a vault, as do a Nubian vault and and a dome, which are
structures that are not very common in in these latitudes. But then thanks to the work of
Simon and and our NCC documents with Adobe Alliance, we have those kind of structures
throughout all this in the region. Community work and we do commercial work with our
commercial work. We save some money to do community work, which consists of finding
houses that are all the time inherited by by people in this region that want to learn how to.
Preserve their their houses or want to learn about plaster or then some repairs. And we
convoke the local community to participate. And that's how we've been doing it for a few
years then.
Tracy Fenix [00:03:27] What has your relationship been like growing and working with
someone, Simone Swan and her, to see the humanness over the years?
Sandro Canovas [00:03:38] I come from a family of brick makers. My great grandfather had
brick factories in Mexico City. She arrived to Mexico in the late twenties from Spain and
arrived to Veracruz. And then at some point he made his way to Mexico City, where he
ended up having three brick factories. It's like how we call it. So that's that's how I some
people say that I kind of have it in my blood. And at some point I. Was walking on the street
in Glasgow, the narrator and I saw myself surrounded with Clovis, and I made me realize that
all the stuff that I was being involved with, Strawberry building and Cobb. It was far from
my from my home traditions. So I beer and I took a look at what was available during that
time in the United States. And I found an internship, a program. I've been in Mexico, a
northern community college in El Rita, and I applied for the certificate in construction. And
that's how I ended up starting looking into the other. And then later on, I was reading a book
called Small House and the Little Planet. That it's about earth constructions that had a
function in our community. And there was the chapter of one house. So I the little book had
all these color photography, and in those there was the photo of a dome with a beautiful blue
plastic. And I read the article or the chapter and I thought, Oh my God, I want to learn how to
do those, those plasters. Funny thing. That's how I ended up coming to Presidio for the first
time in 2006. And I traveled from Mexico City with my youngest brother. The plan was to
come with my sister, my youngest brother and myself, to take a workshop with Simon to sit
there. And at the end it was my sister and my brother and I came over. I know we're dogs,
which was a lot of fun and. And when I arrived to Sun House, I realized that that plaster that
was on the photo was cement. And that was, Oh, my God. But, you
81
Mud Kin interview with Sandro Canovas by Tracy Fenix, January 8, 2023.
know, that's the story of many houses. You know, that people go from building the house
straight to to a cement plaster like the house that I'm starting right now. It's another another
good example of that. And that's how was that was the first time that I that I met Simon and
his to sit there and the workshop consisted on, on having the theory on in one house in in
Presidio on the Texas side. But the practice was being done in a in a beautiful house that had.
Like three or four balls and a couple of domes. You know, he got to power and and we every
day will come down to him to to build a dome or a dome. And that was the first time that I
had interaction with with Adobe Alliance in 2006. And I made a good friendship with both
his and Simon. And I kept coming for I well, I return for the next spring and Simon was 80
years old. Back then I met her when he was 80, so they needed some help. And I continued to
come down to Presidio County during my time off because back then I was a commercial
fisherman in Alaska. So I had the time during the spring and the fall to come and help them.
And eventually I. I stayed. Helping with the CTA to teach the workshops. Until the last
workshop that was given by although their lives happened in the fall of 2060. So the
organization still exists, but it's not active. That's how we became friends. Because to sit
down and and see more announcing money tonight for she lives in Tucson. I'm here to see
that it's still here in procedure. I see that pretty often. I talked with her right before
Tracy Fenix [00:10:20] So you mentioned that you know, the Chicanos in a lot of the
feminist Mexican women are are leading the way in in building, you know, the, you know,
the Adobe protest and workshops within like West Texas and or Canada and the area of you
know, Presidio edu area. What do these workshops look like, working from an
intergenerational perspective? How do you hope to build these skills with members of
the community who are from the area?
Sandro Canovas [00:11:18] Yes, I'm very lucky that when I arrived to Presidio County and
my life had the blessing to really get muddy with Adobe in this region that I learned with
Elders. You know, I. I happened to start learning with his two seater, who is now 77 with
themand was 7094. Only a friend that passed last year with the Santos Chavez. That also a
pass about five six years ago. And and and I think that an early time I realize that that always
earned the elders a we're not going to be around for a long for long you know and that has
been the case that a lot of the other battles in the region have now passed. And with them all
this knowledge and and and I've always kept that very presence. You know, we live in a in a
in a region where most of the knowledge of Adobe, it's on the south side of the river. What I
what I mean by that is that the Guerrero families in Ojinaga have remained there for
generations and and. It has. Barely survived. You know the tradition because of the. Market
that sometimes they can take advantage of selling of always to the Texas side of a little
higher price, a price because people in Texas have a higher economic power. And when I don
the workshops, when we do the workshops, I always try to have that involvement of the
families that have made the always for generations. What we do with that is we take the
students or the volunteers to the Andover Yards kindergarten so they can see a and meet and
work in the places where they are. They always have been done for for at least 20 years. I
know another little Don Manuel, a Rodriguez. We hear that out of his yard. He had been
selling as always, even all the way to New Mexico for 45 years. So for me, having dad a very
person was very important or it's very important to me. I feel that we create projects so these
families can continue making out all this. Because when we live in the border, it's it's it's a
very it's a big possibility that what these families start earning dollars you know, the young
82
Mud Kin interview with Sandro Canovas by Tracy Fenix, January 8, 2023.
people also get recruited by the narco, for example, which has happened with a couple of the
other areas that we have worked. Once they start earning dollars, they forget about the
tradition of out of it. So I having that very and and we tried to get involve as we can, as much
as we can with the local community, and we do that play. The projects and the workshops
twice a year -- once in the spring, one in the fall.
Tracy Fenix [00:15:18] Can you share more or explain the challenges that come from
cementing adobe? How you might restore adobe without using cement?
Sandro Canovas [00:15:43] Yes, and it just made me realize that I didn't answer part of your
question about the involvement of of Thomas and Mrs. Ganis that when we met in person, I
was mostly referring about our campaign with subtle but with Adobe. I got to say that the
tradition of plastering has. I being held mostly by women that we called in Herodotus, you
know, a two seater, for example. Besides that, he she is under Anthony Carroll's daughter.
She's also not waiter. She grew up making out all this. And then when she met Simon, she
became Mason, which is a very unique story. You know, we made a documentary back in
2016. Called a well, it was going to be named Swan Song, which means the last thing that
you do in your lives in British English and. Out of all that footage that we got with the
filmmaker who his name is Cameron Crowe. We got a smaller a smaller field out of that. I
hope that we get to work on the other footage that it's a left from from from that experience
so we can get to your match to fit to the story of Detective Mendes and and semen because
we are dealing with a situation here with the Adobe tradition on on many levels besides the
overtaxation that the projects that are happening with the Adobe restorations in private homes
or in the national park they use these very clear, realistic formula of bringing people from out
of out of state. And and I brought this to the attention to the National Park Service, for
example, you know, during conferences because we have the local knowledge, you know, the
the knowledge might be dormant, you know, but the knowledge is there. So I know it takes
community work to take a deep dive into the social weaving to bring that knowledge back to
the surface, you know, and needs required involvement with the elders, with the youngsters,
you know, and create projects where you can bring that then that knowledge to the surface
and pass it to the younger generations. You know, I've had good conversations with the
superintendent of the high school in Presidio. Not so much in Marfa in March because I've
been very involved with our protest against the taxes. Sometimes they don't like very much
how I've been addressing these taxation and other this. But I think we can we have more
possibility of doing it in South Presidio County, whereas there's the population, it's mostly
Mexican or Mexican American. And regarding your question of the last three. Well, the
adobe and the cement are two materials that are not compatible at all. And at some point in
the fifties and sixties when there was a big push of cement or concrete. People got a little bit
brainwashed on thinking that putting them in to the obvious would be a good way to protect
them, which is not the case when it's some material that, as I just said, it's not compatible and
and that it causes the lamination just separates from the from the other way and they use all
these tricks to to try to keep them together. They put chicken wire, they put nails into the
adobe walls to try to anchor the cement. But at the end, it doesn't work. Like, for example,
the house that we are starting right now, we had a couple of very earthy cracks where the
water started filtering through the year and at the end on the inside you had big openings
because of the erosion. So the right way to do the the preservation and maintenance of these
buildings, it's there's only two ways. Or you do mud blasters that consist of clay safety clay,
where sometimes the straw and sand you can also add manure and nopal use.You know, we
chop them in a palace
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Mud Kin interview with Sandro Canovas by Tracy Fenix, January 8, 2023.
that we have availability of them and you let them for men for about three days. The
fermentation, it depends on the weather. If it's cut cutter where they're it's done to prevent
faster and that's binder for the mix. I doubt that those are what would be the ingredients for a
plaster mix and then we the the other option it's the lime. You can also do Nerf Blaster and
the lime wash, which means alive paint and on the house that where we started right now
that's where we're to do We're doing unearth plastic, then we're doing a lime wash. And the
lime wash is just like that. It's how would they say you put lye with salt, which helps help the
paint make it stronger? And we put some pigments and yes, that's how we are approaching
our our restorations. And I always try to invite friends of mine who specialize in different
things on on other traditions. And because I have friends of mine who are in Colorado with
us or year I I through the years I've invited I've invited a friend who is from Oregon, actually
circulated everything. But we met in Oregon many years ago. She happens to work with
cornerstones out of Santa Fe nowadays. I've invited another friend from Bolivia also who's a
plasterer. I have invited another friend who's an architect, and she said, Great to Colorado, to
from Mexico. So I always try to get a that's. Kind of knowledge embedded in tap into our
workshops and bringing people so we can we can they can also learn about the other over in
our region. And well, that's beside trying to to to have the participation of kids to see that
sadly because it's a setback nowadays. Problems with her knee we have and she hasn't
participated in in in a couple of years. She's got to come and see the house and this I we're
finishing she got she got really excited when she heard that we were working the house and
things to her and and some people that are neighbors in there and Cheetos adjacent to the
property. I got to find out how the ago the house was built and it was built from the although
those were made from people that cross the river from the Mexican communities, just to
make that obvious. And obviously, you know, this is a different board there, you know,
before 911. So now they have different security. I don't know. Implement put in place? Not a
I don't think that's possible anymore.
Tracy Fenix [00:24:47] How has speaking more about the border and and you know
ongoing issues that the borderland is grappling with in terms of supporting migrants
challenged or impacted your work with folks in Ojinaga, Mexico?
Sandro Canovas [00:25:12] Well you know it it it's it challenges the they are keeping the job
they are the tradition allowed because most of the people that hold the knowledge are on the
south side of the river. So they don't have documents to come and work with us. So the. And
that's a fact, you know. I. The regulations put in place with the work permits are a. Far too
made for their requirements. You know, like we don't have the infrastructure to do. I think
that to apply for one of these job permits cost like $10,000, you know, And at this moment,
we don't have that type of infrastructure to do it. But what we do is we create projects that the
the client buys that all this. From the from the other. Whereas, you know, we actually just got
our our client getting Alpine interested and he bought a $1,000 for a little room that he's
going to build. And those are I think that he sold them over one of our other areas that we
worked with in in or he sold it for a dollar 25 a piece, something that I, I should mention to
you that I think it's very interesting is that here in the border, because there's all these
agricultural agricultural regulations we cannot cross dirt across. You know, like if I want to
make a plaster or certain color from this side into wah wah, I cannot bring it over or the other
way, but I can bring it over across. You know, the the red tape around that is just to make a
block out of the clay. And and in that way, we can. We can. We can transport it across the
river. If you transport the orbit in a small amounts, you don't get taxed. But if it's for
commercial use, yes. There's a percentage that that customs doesn't.
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Tracy Fenix [00:27:48] Thank you. And just talking going back to your best political
campaign and, you know, thinking more specifically about the there'll be attacks in
Marfa and Presidio County. What has that campaign spurred since you started? What
have you learned and where do you hope to go with it?
Sandro Canovas [00:28:20] Yes, well, in 2016, when it was in 2017, when they the the
appraisal district in Presidio County imposed the special taxes, not always. The appraisal
district doesn't like calling it a. Attacks, they call it. I'm trying to remember how they named
a classification. A They they they they classify their goal based on on a1a to a three. And I
think it's eight for these different classifications end up in taxation, you know, which means
that in Presidio County if you own an adobe. Nor do they, although they are being taxed,
taxed at a higher rate than a conventional home. I know this sounds nuts because it's the only
place in the world that I have knowledge, and I know that in the United States they like to say
I love. It's the only place in the world that the biggest or the high is. So this is but it's it's a
fact. The Presidio County is the only place in the in the world where the the building material
that they although they it's being taxed usually you know when you have material that it's
energy efficient you get credit it. You know, there's for examples, places like in Australia, if
you recycle that there, that comes out of a place where they're building, for example, a
foundation and you reclaim all that dirt and use it for some other building purpose. You get
tax credits in in Presidio County, they do the opposite. They punish you basically for owning
another way. And what happens is that back in 2000, around 2017, the appraisal district
found they, you know, found out that the database were being sold for a lot of money because
Marfa it's it's world famous because of the art and and people started noticing, you know, that
these constructions hold a lot of beauty and character and and they were being sold for for a
lot of money and they. I think that the tax taxation bracket is 57% more than our regular than
our regular home. So there I go. It is political. It's a phrase that I found myself with. When I
started working with him once one back in 2000, six or seven. But then later on I found out
that the that the phrase was invented or put together by. My friend Ronald Rail, who's also
another hero from Northern Rock. Well, he actually lives in southern Colorado, but he's
obviously from New Mexico and he's from the Alagbado, an architect, also a visionary, and
he's the one who acts or who invented the phrase I, I think I'm the only person who actually.
Has put it to good work, you know. And I did it because I think it's a very unfair and racist
policy from the from the appraisal district to tax the other all this in this way, because this
was the economics of the county where we live in these in this part of the region. It's one of
the poorest counties in the in the country. The here, the median income, it's between 19 to
$24,000 a year. So you tell me who's going to be able I mean, and when most of the
population that owns this are Mexican immigrants and Mexican-Americans. So who's going
to be able to afford these higher taxation? You know, and I when I encountered this situation,
I, I just thought it was unfair. They started making fliers to bring people's attention on the
situation. And what we have been doing for the last year is this last year we doing we give
advise when the when the tax payment of your property comes around, May A, we help
people to file their taxes on their of forms. And we've been very successful in this side like
contesting the taxation with the appraisal district because we ended up finding out that our
appraisal district didn't know anything about Adobe or Earth building and they were
classifying a houses Assad August when they were not where they were classifying whole
houses as I know best when they were not. You know, we've had successful cases that are
very beautiful. As always, the thanks to the contest that we did, they lowered $1,000 in our
eye on taxes for a house. The house where I live, that belongs to my friend Miguel. And it
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Mud Kin interview with Sandro Canovas by Tracy Fenix, January 8, 2023.
was built by his great grandfather. I think it was appraised at $67,000 back in 2017 when we
first fought for it. And at the end they lower it to $38,000, which is a very big, you know, a
decrease on the appraisal. So I would like but I would like to happen is that the abolition of
these taxes, you know another way, homes. I think that the appraisal district and the city of
Marfa are making a mistake by taxing the other obvious in this way because. A it causes, too.
It has empathy. It has a negative impact. They are always in two ways, in two ways. One, it
doesn't allow people to restore. You're out of this because the moment that you do any
restoration of maintenance to your body, your. Your house tax gets higher. At the other. It
doesn't allow anybody who does want to do an addition or build a new house in town. Uh, to
make it out of, of these native material. Because the moment that you do it, you put yourself
in a position that you're going to get these higher attacks. So it's in reality detrimental to the
tradition of Adobe, you know, because you can I mean nobody. Most of the people that that I
know in town are not going to be able to afford it. So what it has caused is that this building
material that has been traditionally. Well, at the beginning it was for for most everybody. But
ended up being used for the for the less rich, for it was transferred to the very wealthy with
these taxes. So I see an injustice with that. And what I would like to do to to see that we
abolish the taxes. There is an offer of a professor of law in San Antonio and his wife that we
build our case with. I mean, with that is that we take this to port sulfur to bring it to to put to
a to do these a group of these graduate students at the university. And I'm really thinking
we're going to we're going to take that proposal. I talked to a couple of people who own
houses in Marfa. That's what we're going to need. You know, somebody who owns a house.
But we can we can context the houses of that of that house to prove how these taxes are
indeed racist because they target Mexican or Mexican Americans.
Tracy Fenix [00:37:45] You mentioned to us in Marfa, where there are these wealthy,
wealthy, affluent, you know, oftentimes white folks who come in who are influenced by,
you know, contemporary art spaces like Chinati. They come in and you sort of like
speak on these land land grabs or they occupy adobe houses and they they're able to
pay the Adobe tax. But can you talk about like. You know, how contemporary art pieces
like to influence impact gentrification in Marfa and and and what type of environment
do they have working with Adobe in the community?
Sandro Canovas [00:38:39] I think when you were here and they mentioned the the
participation. Or then no participation of these art foundations or elites on the preservation of
these kind of traditions and is because recently. They are out there. One of the important is
our foundation, Syrian Time. The foundation, a grab, was able to grab a grant of $1.25
million out of Jack Dorsey, who was the ex-CEO of Twitter. And the way that they
announced these these grants, who I. I have beaten my tongue on how. They grabbed the
ground and how people up there their their program to restore some of the other services that
are owed by the by their organization. And what they did is they offered a grants to women of
color. To learn about Adobe and about construction. And when in reality they use brown
people. To secure these funds. Uh, because if you told me that building a small part of a wall
that it's ten feet long and and and repair, doing repairs on walls, on. On some of the buildings
that they have in town does something to the preservation of of a tradition. For me, it's
baloney. You know, you need a real involvement with the local community, which it really
hasn't happened. You know, I think that's also the formula of them hiring people from other.
From other places. It's not right. You know, I, I proposed that the that the local knowledge it's
use you know or I mean we have elders like to see that we have so many elders that work
with available locally or or even you know you're going to bring somebody
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Mud Kin interview with Sandro Canovas by Tracy Fenix, January 8, 2023.
from the state work bring bring out the letter. You know, there's younger generations of
other. Whereas like your next thing you know, you're gonna love this A there's Eldorado
whereas in northern New Mexico also you know if you're really gonna own what you say that
you're it's going to be knowledge transfer from women to women that's what you should be
doing not bringing a. Male wealthy contractors from out of state or using a wealthy Anglo
contractors to do this kind of projects. You know, because in my perception, A, these people
are not into the preservation of tradition of art over. Otherwise they do they would do a free
community events. In my opinion, they are into the club because they can make a lot of
money. So they are into other. It's part of the taxation also, you know, it's fancy. I think it's
part of the negative part of out of these gentrification. But at the end, I view it as they are into
the Adobe tradition because of the money that they can make and a pat in the back, not
because they care about preserving a tradition. You know what they've done community
events. It's because they have the backup of all these enormous grants. You know. So I'm
very critical of these things.
Tracy Fenix [00:43:24] What are some ethics for engaging in adobe practice?
Sandro Canovas [00:43:33] I always start to get involved and be close to the elders that are
still around. For me, that's very, very, very important. You know, I, I think I kind of think that
anything more grounding, you know, for younger generations that that still hold that
connection to the land and with the elders to have conversations or implement projects
around other construction. You know, there's a lot of a lot of stuff about the community. A. I
see Adobe as a net. You know that can help a. Bring together all these. Individuals, young or
old, that feel that might be drifting, you know, with our community because of the. Cultural
amnesia. You know, all these different effects that colonization has brought into these
communities that they don't even recognize. You know, that's that's the hard part of it. And I
think that because most of everybody in this region comes or has adobe houses in their
lineage. It's a good to connect people.
Tracy Fenix [00:45:34] What do you hope for younger generations who are interested in
taking on these ancestral skills? Or who are interested in restoring their adobe houses,
if they do have them in their lineage?
Sandro Canovas [00:46:18] Well to have the conversations with them. You know, as I said
before, this knowledge is dormant. You know, you don't know how many times, you know,
like I've been on busses, you know, hitchhiking on gas stations, you know, that I get picked
up on there on the road and and with the strangers. When they ask, you know, what do I do?
And the conversation on the lobby starts. They immediately, you know, there's these
happiness, you know, that in lives, their faith, you know, because they get to talk about how
their grandmother, you know, their grant, their father still lives in the house or in the family.
They have a house that it's been vacant, but that they want to do something with it and they
don't realize how easy it is in reality, you know, because the formulas are the ingredients to
where these houses, they're not difficult to. Two are expensive to buy. You know, you can go
and harvest display anywhere, you know, and sifted. You know, you can even go on the arena
or the side who are Roger. You know like the that that I'm using right now. The restoration of
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Mud Kin interview with Sandro Canovas by Tracy Fenix, January 8, 2023.
the house comes from an arroyo nearby. You know. Yeah. Sometimes you have to buy the
lime and things like that. But I've noticed that doing a little effort and dig and talk about
where these people come from, you know, leads me to find out that they have houses, you
know, on their lineage. But it's something that hasn't been paid attention to, you know, like
people don't think about the obvious anymore as an important part of the family, you know,
because as I said, they've been brainwashed and they got into learn that cement. It's better that
it brings you more status and that having a house made a block like how they call it, which in
reality it's not you know I even had. A lady. That came to one of the workshops that she
couldn't stop crying. You know, and the older woman. And and and she was so emotional
because she had been wanting to do repairs to her house for many, many years. But she didn't
know how. And and and she just cried for the last the first hour when she arrived, when she
just saw the heart of it and she felt the beauty. You know, that was very touchy. We have it
happened like three years ago. And so I find very lucky that I get to have all these
interactions. You know, I was in the adobe yard of one of the other areas that we work with a
couple of of days ago. You know, he dog I actually went to two other areas. I didn't find them
but I talked to their wives, you know, and it's really beautiful to see the adobe shaking there
and thinking of the mosquitoes, you know, of the branches of the mosquitoes outside of the
house. You know, they are they are the areas that are used to make the outdoors, you know,
and and I know that as soon as the weather gets better. Because right now we're dealing with
with cold weather. They're not making that obvious. They will start I it's one of my New
Year's resolutions, you know, that we're going to. We're going to implement more
community, participate, more community projects. You know, I already talked to my friend
Francisco in New Mexico, who is in charge of that, the graduate program of preservation and
conservation at the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at the UNAM to make us a
drawing. A he's a wonderful thrower and and he's going to make us a poster for the
association that overalls that I can tell us where we're going to put all the names of the other
areas that want to participate. And we're going to make a small billboard at the entrance of a
kindergarten coming from Presidio. So letting the community know that there is availability
for them to buy. Otherwise. You know, and that and that. We can we can make the
arrangements. You know, I don't find ethical. To make a peso out of that. Okay, so I don't sell
the other this. You know the deal that's made directly without the weight of this. And the
other thing that we've done is that we have been teaching, making sure that our families learn
about plastering. So that's another way to keep the tradition or art or to enhance it, because
they already make progress, but they don't know how to bless them. So when we've done the
workshops, they are the widows, they are our present, or we do them at their house.
Tracy Fenix [00:52:27] What are some of your hopes and aspirations for future adobe
projects?
Sandro Canovas [00:52:37] I. I have a deep cultural relationship with the tradition. So for
me, it's very important that. The other younger other weirdos that I know. Like my friend. My
friend Sammy. That. We don't let the tradition go into the sunset. You know, for me that's
very important because I know the other the various. The other areas are the others have been
dying, you know, lately. Like it's a fact that us, the three of us, we've been we've been
burning the. You know, like every other year. And so that that pushes into our faith that it's
our duty, if you want to put it that way, that it's that we have a duty to do the best we can to to
keep that tradition alive. So I what I want to see is that. In this region at least. With those two
other areas. A. We create projects. There's there's proposals from the from the Departments of
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Mud Kin interview with Sandro Canovas by Tracy Fenix, January 8, 2023.
Culture to Iowa to do something. And I also. That the younger people that are interested in
that over the Maasai or in the pond or in Stirling were that sometimes they call themselves
the widows when they're not, you know, it's, uh, it's different when you know how to plaster
on the. You know, these are the liberal families that I'm referring to are people who make a
living by selling. Not always that they. Open their eyes and get to recognize that the tradition.
Resides and is barely surviving the because of this family smoking. You know, and and that
they don't focus only on their projects in Texas that they I would like to see that there's. Our
communication. Communication between or a recognition and a participation that that in both
they they are though this in our.
Tracy Fenix [00:55:34] Yeah. Thank you for that. And thank you so much for all your time,
Sandra. It's been really special to just sit here and listen and be in conversation with you
today and continue building this conversation in the future as well.
Sandro Canovas [00:55:52] I suppose. Thank you to you. And I'm very interested in
learning about the other people that you're interviewing. As I told you, I was going to suggest
a collective that it's called collective or topic inquiries. You know, there is this group of
young kids that do the whole band is troubled projects with the primary community in in in
very poor places outside of Ciudad Juarez. And I think you should look into their work as
well, because it's inspiring. And I think at the end, all of us activists or artists that work with
these. Beautiful. Material that we can use as a medium or in different ways. At the end, we all
learn from each other. Yeah, you know.
Tracy Fenix [00:57:02] Yeah, absolutely I am. I'm in the process of, you know, I think it's
this is an ongoing process, My mapping project that I'll share with everyone but other folks,
you know, a journey Quinn Lopez and Christine Sandoval. And, and so it's slow moving
since I one you know, I'm, I have support from other folks but I'm trying to move with
intention and I think I think it's really powerful. I think collective building collective power is
really important, particularly because like the issues that you mentioned, like standards and.
You know, regulations around, although they they're so vastly different depending on regions
that it's very subtle, but it's also very impactful, the distinctions between what's happening.
You know, and so hearing your story along with others and in conversation with other
activists is really important. And so, so important part of the the archive of maintaining
intergenerational relationships. And in and you're focused on allyship. It it helps us
understand the importance of elders from many perspectives as well. So I'm excited to share
more with you soon then.
Sandro Canovas [00:58:39] You know, I'm really having this conversation at the end of the
year looking to a new one. You know, it made me realize how important, you know, this
thing can be, you know, because we're a younger generation that we have access, you know,
to these gadgets, you know, like the one that we're having the conversation right now. You
know, we can order their books online. We can go and take online courses, you know, all
these things. But in reality, at least in my case, they hold the tradition that I have so close to
my heart these days. You know, that became part of what I do with my life. I learned elders,
you know, that never had access to this kind of things. Steel and steel. And feel. I think that
that's. It's a generational difference, you know, on how the knowledge was passed. So we live
in a time that even though we have access to all these things. We are running the risk that the
traditions are lost within a generation.
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Mud Kin interview with Sandro Canovas by Tracy Fenix, January 8, 2023.
Sandro Canovas [01:00:13] And that's that for me, it's a scary. You know. I see. I see that.
You know, like. Don Manuel. Don. Don Santos, Like all these elders that we have very you
know, all this knowledge went with them. And if we don't do something right now, all that
we're alive and that we don't pass it on, it's just going to be a memory.
Tracy Fenix [01:00:44] Right. And I think it brings back the idea of what we had shared
earlier with Miguel is that these are ancestral indigenous lands and this is a part of, you
know, maintaining the relationship to the land and building it through these sustainable
forms that are. Are are rooted in in how. And how those areas are working to maintain the
land. So. I think the idea of of maintaining and building elder knowledge is central to, you
know, building kinship with the land as well.
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Mud Kin interview with William Carmago by Tracy Fenix, December 22, 2022.
Tracy Fenix [00:00:04] Can introduce yourself and describe your current artistic
practice.
William Camargo [00:00:20] I'm based in Anaheim, California, which is in Orange County
and in Tongva/ Chumash territory. I’m a photo-based artist. I use photography as a medium
to make interventions, to look at archives and respond to those archives through those, and
the response to those archives are in those photographs that I capture when after dealing a lot
of my research about the kind of happenings policies that were in and around Anaheim from
like, you know, probably like late 1800s up into contemporary kind of like histories and
happenings that happened like maybe ten, 15 years ago when I was like a youth in the city.
And a lot of the other stuff is like collecting landmarks, family photographs from different
diasporas of Latin America. They migrate to the US or to other countries as well.
Tracy Fenix [00:01:31] I think your emphasis on archival and photographic
documentation is very layered and from an intergenerational framework, oftentimes,
heavily embedded in the Southern California landscape. Can you describe your
relationship to the land in Southern California or particularly in Orange County and
Anaheim, and how it impacts your artistic practice?
William Camargo [00:02:04] Yes, I think it's very well, it's very interconnected, I think.
What I notice of like kind of like the the beginning of the city of Anaheim and Orange
County was the orange groves there that were here. And some of them, sadly, are not there
anymore. And there's some around that are still left over from from that time. But was like
the kind of connection between labor, you know, the the movement of Canales to Orange
County was to do that some of that labor and you know, in the fields in the orange groves.
And kind of also just a little bit of like, you know, the story of of my family migrating to to
the city of Anaheim and, you know, a place for labor, for work. You know, they came and
stayed around here for now. They'll probably have like. A good 3540 years in the city of
Anaheim, I think, before I was born as well. Right. So I think looking at some of the archives
and how I navigated those those things as a kid from kind of being uncomfortable some in
some spaces and then realizing that like some of these areas were really kind of like
precocious beforehand, but not really knowing why. And then kind of looking at some of the
history, I started making images that were responsive to those archives that I was finding in
the city of places that I used to go as a kid, play soccer, you know, very much as a kid. I used
to go around the city and just, you know, play sports and hang out with my friends. But I
didn't never knew the history of the city. So I think that's what my connection with, like
looking at history and living through some of these kind of like historic events in the city of
Anaheim, you know, was my connection to, you know, to the city and to the land and also,
you know, just living here and as you know. I would say, like my lived experience also has a
connection with the land as well. So. This week.
Tracy Fenix [00:04:25] I think particularly your photograph, your self portraiture
photography. Particularly that you'll forget who worked here. Anaheim Packing House really
resonated with me, and I think the ongoing conversation of critiquing this site through your
own lived historical legacy with your family and the relationship that Brown women have
with labor, you know, opens up an important heavy critique around, like you mentioned,
labor. You know, violent past. And also you're the way that you're able to document these
contested public sites. How does that show up? How does settler colonialism and the
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Mud Kin interview with William Carmago by Tracy Fenix, December 22, 2022.
critique of settler colonialism show up in your work? How do you interrogate that
process as you're documenting sites?
William Camargo [00:05:31] Yeah, I mean, I mean, the history of photography is very and
the the canon in photography are very imperialist and colonial in itself. So I think a lot of
those inner conversations I do have with myself about using such a tool that helped kind of
like propel imperialism and colonialism in many parts of the country and very much also
Southern California. It's hard. It becomes it becomes this kind of like conflict within, like,
should I still use the camera to document and kind of interrogate these these histories? How?
And I think I look at other photo based artists, they use this tool to talk about like these kind
of imperialists and colonial ways that that the camera was used against them. Right. So I
think, you know, it's it's hard to navigate that. But I think what I'm trying to do is also use the
same tools. Obviously, it's it's different than if if me not using one and me using the camera
as it as in looking back on my own community, I'm different than like the ones that the
photographers that were using it for colonial and imperialistic tools. Right. So I think it kind
of also hopefully contradicts it. It and and somehow like burns down these these ideas of
pulling on imperialism because I've been looking at a lot of like photographers, color native
photographers they use this tool as well and how we can kind of. Really kind of burned down
that they can in and those histories but not forget them, of course, and somehow create a new
a new story with with these tools. I think history is super important to to look at and not
forget that these histories did happen. I think in a city like mine where this history was not
even introduced as to me as as a student as part of that there. You know, story of like making
sure that these stories don't get erased, that the labor of these women don't get a race, that the
labor of that time when the Hirshman folks don't get your race and get left behind. So we can
actually kind of and I think that's why I named my made. Project origins is placements. You
know, and I put in and you know, possibilities there at the end to think about like what we
can can create for a better future. I think we also have to look at the future and what kind of
holds. And I think a lot of the photographers that I look up to were using this tool and create
new possibilities of what we can do with this tool. You know, it's still very complicated
sometimes like conflicts and whenever I do have to like lecture, but this is where I come in. I
was like, Should I still use this tool or should I not like it's. So it's very kind of and I think we
all have these conversations with other photographers that I do know we're trying to make
this work is how can we burn down those structures and create new ones to better sustain and
hold this together as well.
Tracy Fenix [00:08:59] What are the ethics of photography in documentation of land?
How does that legacy proceed itself into the future? Sort of like safekeeping. What does
that look like for you, knowing that the work that you're doing is grappling with the
historical lens and examination of these critical power dynamics. And how do you think
about how you move within your own ethics for the future?
William Camargo [00:09:40] I think hopefully these images and these documents that I'm
creating are creating counter narratives and counter archives. I think from reading a letter
from Michelle Smith, it's like, you know, these documents take a claim to what we were
starting to know about our history and the history of of, you know, specifically in that time of
brown people, that of how we navigated the city, how we kind of created some of these, you
know, these places and how we sustained economically many of these cities money for a for
a long time and how right on the back of these brown bodies how the city got rich without
including as in these histories. Right. I hope that I think these these counter narratives and
counter histories and counter archives. I want to kind of replace
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Mud Kin interview with William Carmago by Tracy Fenix, December 22, 2022.
those really hegemonic stories that we do hear about history and specifically in Anaheim and
I think in a country overall. Right. Knowing that like Orange kind of gets this kind of rip off,
like being a very kind of, you know, Republican enclave where now it's like over 60%, you
know, APAC. So changes of status that also like are still happening today like and this people
other people that I know are creating these kind of still malleable histories and staking a
claim to, you know. Their visibility and the city are in the county as well. I think some of
these images combine these other places of like the canon of photography and know the
canon of contemporary art in Southern California as well. I think for me it's more important
to look at those kind of like kind of narratives that I'm really kind of trying to push forward
in.
Tracy Fenix [00:11:47] Orange County is a Republican dominated space, but the legacy
of thinking the borderland in the way that California was formed by Mexican land
grants and the way that, you know, these different shifts have happened within settle
experiences within Orange County and those shared relationships between Mexican
and indigenous experiences of land. Your work opens up those conversations around
how Mexican and indigenous histories are very much intertwined to these
infrastructure buildings particular to the orange grove. Could you talk more about how
you work with the community and your collaboration with family extends into building
off new infrastructures in your projects?
William Camargo [00:13:12] I look back at my own family and, we come from Guerrero,
very black and indigenous states in Mexico. And I think about howthat is reflected in my
brown skin and my dad's brown skin and my parents, and how we navigate here differently
than when we look at kind of like colorism within our like kind of Latin societies. And I
think about like also the histories of of Anaheim, how a lot of time went to hash and when
they mixed around with with Mexicanos and how some of those land grants, those ranches
that started like you know, were given were taken from from native folks given to mestizos
and Spaniards in this new kind of like colonized area and given to them and then having
Native folks work for them. Right. So and I think I hit that with a lot of the some of those
images that I look at, especially the one about my high school, which is, you know, a mascot
that we still have called the colonies because it's a German colony. But not again, you know,
the main narrative is not that that these these colonials were given to mostly mestizo and
Spanish folks and then given then from, you know, taking them away from our folks. Right.
So none of that kind of is part of that story. And I think that's right. I hopefully because of me
going to that to the high school and my family, my cousins going to the high school, it's a
very much personal image as well. And I think the relationship with the family is super
important when we look at, you know, some of the artists that I look up to, La Aguilar, you
know, even Irene Antonio Reyes from from Texas, because I think the history doesn't just
start off from away from home. It starts within the home as well. And the legacies that we
leave behind, you know, even though my family hasn't been here in a long time, but I think
we still are part of those histories and and continuing, they will continue to be part of this
history in the future as well.
Tracy Fenix [00:15:27] Right, Right. I think about the impact of family in the home and
the built environment. There's a continuation of a connectedness, a groundedness to the
earth in the way that we're sharing communal relations. And so I know in your
particular your recent exhibition or not, Van Hove, this year at City College, you also
are thinking about like your styles risk watcher, cyber, you know, self-portraiture in the
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Mud Kin interview with William Carmago by Tracy Fenix, December 22, 2022.
way that you bring in different elements of the family, you know, these different
subtleties of bringing in. Home elements into your portraiture and embracing them in a
way that sort of illuminates the connectedness. So how do you come up with these, you
know, site-specific documentations and very elaborate installations that embody
elements of your family and your relationship to the community?
William Camargo [00:16:44] I wasn't really kind of thinking of what histories were part of.
And so I read them. I see better, for instance, Betsy and I said, she's one and this kind of
aesthetic that we do have and that we should also be proud of. And something because we're
looking you know, I was looking at like minimalism when I was looking going through
academia and the art world is like we look at the movements of minimalism and some of the
chaotic stuff, which was like the abstract Expressionism was also, again, very light and very
outside the home, right? I wanted to kind of bring in some of those, those still lifes often that
my mom would bring us from, you know, from my country, especially like I think I did have
one of like, you know, we have birds and, you know, and the household and how that's so
very important to us now. And with that's moving from like public housing to like a home
that's like a backyard. You know, my dad took advantage of being like, I'm going to plant as
many some as we can to try to because that's how I grew up, like growing up the land, you
know, he was you would do beans mice like Calabasas tomatoes are from from the land
before and after, before having to, like move over here. And then he would actually, like,
grow around the towns and kind of like sell it to to other folks. So he's like, he wanted to go
back to that. We did kind of move into that home and be like, I'm used to kind of like, you
know, living off the land and those just made beautiful, like still lifes and and foragers that
are now that, you know, we're in that show of Latinos. Van Right. Because he still wanted to
continue doing these things that he was so used to when he was growing up and he don't.
And I think to also, like, come back like this whole narrative of like classism within within
we still lives within. Minimalism is like, well, where we do what we do with what we have
and we shouldn't be ashamed of like being resourceful with our with materials and with our
things that we do have.
Tracy Fenix [00:19:29] Yeah. I think that practice of care-taking and also yeah,
resourcefulness is what carries forward and oftentimes is sort of appropriated into, you know.
Uh, just appropriated by, you know, affluent cultures. In this way that gets reshaped in a way
that doesn't really is can be a disservice, you know, to the folks. I often, you know, black and
brown laborers sort of leading the way in building the infrastructure of a site. And I think in
this way, your work is sort of reclaiming that and making a point to draw attention to it in an
an embracing way. And so I'm wondering, too, like, what does collaboration with family and
community look like in your in your work going forward? And how do you think you can,
you know, sort of reclaim? You know, particularly like landmark initiatives with with your
family and continue embracing these these forms of care-taking in your work.
William Camargo [00:20:42] I think these are a conversation that I've had with likes and
others that we work with and we trade. And I think one of the things that I'm looking forward
to is how we can also hopefully sustain these initiatives and these practices of like care,
mutual aid and and helping one another with even just kind of saying like, right, this is not
charity work, it is solidarity work. But I think a lot of the stuff kind of like stops it at a certain
point because of the bureaucracy of like, how does it look like a city given us, like some land
to even just like cultivate some of our, you know, fruits and
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Mud Kin interview with William Carmago by Tracy Fenix, December 22, 2022.
vegetables like so also like, you know, I think we're in that stage of collaborating. And when
I do go into communities, like when I do them retreats of like most of the folks don't know,
I'm like, I'm an artist. Like, you know, I'm just there to provide resources because I'm in a
more like, I'm in a privileged place where I can where I know how to get these these things
from, you know, nonprofits and give them back to to the folks that need it. And just recently,
I think the you know, I think maybe like three months ago this and you're asking me like, oh,
like, like what is it that you do? And I you know, I live in that as an art is you know, I think
that I and I think I enjoyed the way that prices work when they asked for like, oh, well how
come you haven't taken images that was part of that don't. And I was like, oh well, you know,
enlighten me. Right? Because I think, you know, when looking at this, you know, the history
of photography is, you know, not parachuting into a community, being asked to kind of come
in and photograph, you know, people and doing portraits. And the community is to be invited
instead of to coming in. And it's kind of like taking something from them. Right. So I think
I've slowed down with the way I work and and also because I work with a medium format
and large camera. A large format camera. As if instead of, you know, coming in for like one
hour and doing something and leaving and never coming back is is a very build community
with this interest and and respect. And it's kind of like nonhierarchical, too, as well, right?
Because, you know, they're the ones really organizing committee to get folks to get fed and
help me with like getting the word out and. You know, But I think, you know, I'm a huge fan
of like Glenn Beck. And just I think it's been super hard to navigate. And we're still living in
like a British colonial space, Right. When and, you know, governments alone give give land
back or when they do, it's like land that is not really kind of like in great shape already. Right.
So I think that's something that we're looking at and seeing how we kind of like get some of
these pieces of. To form some of our own stuff and also trying to gain that knowledge from
other people.
Tracy Fenix [00:23:53] Speaking more directly to your ongoing mutual aid and activist
work, you were recently the commissioner of the Heritage and Cultural Heritage and
Culture at the city of Anaheim and now currently on the board of your community
school in Anaheim where you went to school. Can you talk a little bit more about how
you're working to support informally as a commissioner in that role, but now how
you're bringing that work into your current role with the school system?
William Camargo [00:24:37] One of the things that we did that I was proud of to be a team
of is to actually pass the first. We were the first in Orange County to pass Indigenous Peoples
A back in 2000. This I think 2019, 2020. Funny. But then after that, like it kind of got like
dried out with like some of the stuff that were working on. But the last thing we're working
on is actually a massive public art plan in which we don't have a public art plan yet. And I
think hopefully a come out next year. A lot of that work that I was in wanted it to be included
in. The plan is to actually have community input, community questions, community like
meetings to be like what is public art as well? What public art that we have and how we can
also elevate some other communities or public art. Mm hmm. And I think it was a great
experience. I think it just sometimes with a loss, particularly a space there like was very
political and it brought traffic with, you know, with connections to the like the city council
and everything was happening at city council. We kind of like seep over to all the
commissions. So I started like my time that kind of expire and move on to things that I can
actually like really have a great input and have to be part of that input too. Right? So the
schools, 13 schools and the public and at my school district have become public community
schools. Now there's any designated community schools which to have students be part of
that board of parents, teachers and then community partners. So I
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Mud Kin interview with William Carmago by Tracy Fenix, December 22, 2022.
think, you know, I'm looking forward to working with them with the mutual aid stuff, but
also through visual arts and and making, you know, they want to make murals first in some of
the schools. But I'm also trying to push them to kind of look beyond just the murals, but also
like public art in general and how we can kind of get them engaged with visual arts and that
that should be part of also community. And and this whole idea about care, you know, what is
a good healthy community looks like. It includes visual arts and public art as well.
William Camargo [00:27:10] Yeah. Along with like meeting basic needs for for the
community school. Right. So, you know, making sure that they have a place to sleep and I
can be helping with like groceries. So they have quite a bit of, you know. It's new. And I
think we're still trying to figure out like what a community school looks like in Anaheim
specifically because it's so different than any school in New York or in the Midwest or even
up in the Bay Area. So we're kind of like solidifying roles and what that means and what is a
good like a good community school with like.
Tracy Fenix [00:27:50]. It seems like you're thinking about these from a very holistic
framework. There's a lot of nuances in terms of the geographic relationship between
Latinx communities. My last question is just to leave on a note of possibility and hope.
What does radical features for both our communities look like for you?
William Camargo [00:28:23] These public spaces are parks and greenspace are the spaces
for us to kind of like be outside in as well. And so it's a good like, you know, a healthy
community for me looks like having enough. Meeting the needs of folks food wise, not
having the food disparities in certain areas affordable as well, but also having programs there
that people can own at a farm and sustain themselves when they can, you know, maybe a for
themselves. Right. So, you know, like a just like education as well that teaches the folks the
history. Right. The counter-narratives that I was talking about earlier and giving the students
a good outtake of like what you can be in a space. And I just like, you know, we're mostly
like a brown, like Mexican-American us and some Saudi and Central American folks. But the
whole pressure would be like, you know, only becoming adopted and then like, you know,
not having those ideas. And if you didn't want to be a doctor, then, like, you pretty much
don't have a future, right? So but including a lot of those ideas that you can be like, you
know, you know, public works very like in the park district. You can be an artist, you can be
a teacher having like enough funds to kind of also, like, give information about that, not just,
you know, we're going to go to Berkeley to visit and this is where you can become a lawyer,
right? So, well, I mean, this could it be, But I would want Disney at Disneyland outside of my
city, leave us the money behind to create this kind of initiative. Like like how to how do these
big conglomerates should be paying their fair share to fund some of these projects that I'm
like looking at. Right. Like, can we make sure that everyone has enough for the month? I'm
sure with the budget of this and then it can pay that so many times over and over again. So
yeah, I think that's kind of like one of my ideas of what like a good, healthy community looks
like.
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Mud Kin interview with Miguel Mendias by Tracy Fenix, January 28, 2023.
Tracy Fenix [00:00:09] Could you introduce yourself and your current practice in
Marfa?
Miguel Mendias [00:00:25] My name is Miguel Mendias, and I currently live in Marfa,
Texas. I'm an interdisciplinary artist. My work is conceptual and it draws upon institutional
critique, social practice and performance. I typically work in a site specific way with
installation, and I also often incorporate sculpture, video and film performance into my work.
Although I'm not very concerned with sort of traditional methods of object production. And
for the last five years, my artistic practice has been focused on and grounded by adobe. Pun
intended, I guess, and things concerning me as well. So I've been using adobe as sort of a
deep explorer to practice.
Miguel Mendias [00:01:36] You know, I also had tried to think of a way to talk about more.
I was like, I was like, Maybe this is just enough to say that my practice is focused on me right
now. But I was trying to pass out more in writing, like how it is an exploration for me.
Especially because my practice is kind of more of a conceptual practice and this is like a very
it's the materiality of it is probably the sort of thinking of first. But for me it's also it's been
very so I was just like kind of like loosely like making a list of words that come to my mind
when I think of how this has impacted my artistic practice. And some of the words they came
up with was like restorative, like non-linear, nonhierarchical connective material, like genetic
memory. Of course, for me it's I'm like deeply tied to a little way through my identity and my
ethnicity and my upbringing. Like these are the buildings that my family lived in. It's part of
it's directly connected to like my ancestral lineage in my childhood as well and the places that
I've lived.
Tracy Fenix [00:03:01] Could you talk a little bit more about your ancestral connection
to your Adobe home now and in how you work through your own histories, through
these, you know? To this Our practice?
Miguel Mendias [00:03:25] I am of mixed ancestry. I'm Mexican-American, and I am a fast
and rather moody sport that Omara descends on my father's side and my and I am Czech
American on my mother's side. My father's family is all from the Chihuahua and desert,
rooted in the soil and desert for many generations. And that includes Marfa, which is part of
the Chilean desert as well, and that in Marfa going back for about five generations. So I spent
every childhood summer and Marfa visiting with my great grandparents. My grandfather who
lived here, gradients and great uncles and mostly the elderly people. Marfa being such a small
town, the cousins I had my age were not so interested in playing with their cousins from the
city.
Tracy Fenix [00:04:36] I think there's a lot of familiarity with the landscape that is
presented through adobe, particularly the way that you can distinguish different clays,
different soils, and understand how that impacts the adobe architecture. Can you share
a little bit about what that feels like for you to observe these distinctions and be able to
explore this in your own artistic practice?
Miguel Mendias [00:05:25] Yeah, I love that you brought that up. And it's so true. Once I. I
came to Marfa in 2016, but then really relocated here, knowing I'm going to be here for a
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Mud Kin interview with Miguel Mendias by Tracy Fenix, January 28, 2023.
while, be based out of here in 2017. And I had this funny realization where when I got back
to Marfa and started working with Adobe, almost immediately I realized like I had the last
room that I had lived in, in Baltimore. When I was in school, I had really, like painted my
room. I had gone through multiple paint samples to find this color for my room, and it was
kind of like it was a brown, but it was like a purplish reddish, like it was a very specific color
of brown. And I kept I often keep paint samples because I like color and I like names of
colors. So I had this paint sample still in my possession and when I moved to my friend
started learning at Adobe, the first thing you realize you're like, Oh yeah, those were made
and Alpine or Those were made in Presidio, those were made in Marfa. It's very distinct color
differentiations. And as I started working on this ancestral house, literally using the dirt from
my yard, I realized that the color paint that I had picked for my room was like, literally, like
the color mark of it. You know, it looks different than Presidio. It looks different than okay, It
looks different even than Alpine. I think Alpine tends to be more reddish Presidio and I often
have more of that yellow clay mixed in lighter color as well. And Marfa has this very
specific, like reddish purplish brown dirt. And and so I literally had that paint sample out and
I was like comparing it to the wall of my great grandfather's house. And I was like, Is it really
close? And how funny that is. I remember when I was picking when I was painting that last
bedroom, I had been suffering a bit from like living in the Northeast for so long. And I got I
got seasonal affective disorder. Just I'm used to more sunlight, even though I've lived in other
parts of the U.S. other than Texas. But I had lived in Texas and California a long time where I
had a lot of sunlight. So moving to the East Coast was radical in terms of like very different
in terms of light. And I remember painting and painting that room very much leading to
wanting a color that was like grounding and nourishing for me in some way instinctually, and
ended up painting it the color of dirt. So.
Tracy Fenix [00:08:03] I love that. Relationality is very central in like creation stories
and the ways that land is read is in itself it's color theory, but like the way that it is
guided through. A deep, intimate knowledge of a particular place that takes years of
investing in a place. What does it require of someone to build the time in nuance and
understanding how to work with Adobe? And might those ethics look like for others
doing that work?
Miguel Mendias [00:10:33] The first thing that comes to mind is the way this question that
you asked me. Brings up for me how I was raised. So I was raised with in a culture rather,
that requires a lot of respect for elders and the kind of culture where you don't call yourself a
leader or an expert. Other people decide that you're a leader or an expert. That's not a name
that you give to yourself. So I was raised in a way with some of these more indigenous
understandings also of the world, like the way that I was raised. I was not I'm not very good
at capitalism because I wasn't raised to think about how I individually matter as an individual
and could make money for myself individually, etc. I was more raised to think about how I fit
into a larger picture, whether it's community or ecosystem, etc. So and so my approach to
working with Adobe in the first place was that I hope hopefully just based on prayers that
people will come into my life that can teach me had some reticence about just going and
seeking it out on my own. I'm not the kind of person that would read a book on Adobe and
then assume I'm an expert, even if books exist that are very good. That's not something at all
that I was drawn to. Everything in the way that I was raised is about learning from your
elders. But that means that the elders have to want to teach you or see value in you as a
student and be willing to take you on and share their knowledge with you. So it's a culture of
respect. It's complicated for me, in large part because of my identity as a person of mixed
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Mud Kin interview with Miguel Mendias by Tracy Fenix, January 28, 2023.
descent. I don't feel entitled to this knowledge. And that's also a reflection of the way that I
was raised. And I'm not here to conquer this knowledge either. And I'm not here to become,
you know, to glorify myself with whatever skills or knowledge I'm lucky enough to have
passed onto me. But at the same time, there was like a reclamation process for me. And who
first brought it up to me was literally my cousins here and Martha. I'm very grateful to have a
relative of mine who, when I was first looking at this house, told me, Miguel, of course you
can fix this up and I'll tell you, I can help you. I'll teach you what I learned in that first
walkthrough of the house I'm currently working on. He had told me like, well, you know, his
father had made repairs on the house and he went all through the house explaining to me he
was literally my first teacher on Adobe on my own in my twenties. I had been interested in
Earth building because I understood that it was something that came from my own family
history. But at the time that I was looking, I didn't find any courses or anything. There was
nothing that taught at all. But there was Cobb Building workshop going on. I was living in
Fort Worth, Denton Dallas, Fort Worth area at the time, and I found this Cobb workshop and
I took it mostly just because I was interested. And I knew that I looked up and saw that it was
kind of similar to Adobe, and I thought Earth Building was cool and I wanted to explore it as
a young person. But that's partly because I didn't have my elders that were working with all
that I could go to any more. And then I moved to Marfa and sort of I felt I met Sandro within
the first few months of living here and she had heard about me and this house and I had heard
and people kept saying I needed to meet him. And then it was through him that I was able to
participate in these community projects and workshops and learn from actual Alamo barrows
in in Mexico. And also people that Sandro brought here. And I learned from his experience
and from teachers that he brought and he introduced me to. His mentors, and that was on the
other side of the river in Mexico. I mean. Those became my teachers, and not just by my
identity as a as a person of mixed ancestry, but also by my age, because in some ways I'm
very young, even in the culture and still considered young people call me Miguelito, which is
a diminutive, which I don't mind, but I'm not also I'm not like some people think I'm like 20
years old and I'm not. So that's part of it, too. Like, it's kind of like I'm like, okay, I get it, you
know? At what point do I start? I may look beautiful to people, but I'm not actually the youth
anymore. So it's like learning how to and there's a lot of things about my specific identity that
make things a little more complicated. But I think that's where. There's a lot of. Things that I
have to grapple with, and that's part of reclamation anyway.
Tracy Fenix [00:16:10] Yeah. I love that you brought up elders and elder knowledge.
And in the act of being entrusted by an elder and building that relationship and kinship
through a bit. And I'm curious because you mentioned, you know, particularly, I think
through ageism in the field and and in in. But I think in terms of sharing knowledge and
wisdom and skills that can happen at any age. And I'm wondering, as you've been able
to receive this and this knowledge from elders, like what would your elder self look like
doing this work and being able to reciprocate the knowledge with others who identify as
Latin and or indigenous and want to start building their practice in relation to the
community?
Miguel Mendias [00:17:05] Yeah, I think about that a lot. You had this question in here
before too, about working with matriarch elders and how to address that which plasterers and
fellow contemporary and all the feminist and queer trans POC artists. And I my response that
was I read that and I thought, you know, that's actually really I wish there was more like I
don't actually have a lot of that. I'm limited here. Part of it is the geography of this place.
There aren't a ton of feminists here and we're a small town, but it's and there is like Sandro
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Mud Kin interview with Miguel Mendias by Tracy Fenix, January 28, 2023.
introduced me to a matriarch like expert Classer, and that's Case who CPA who lives in
Ojinaga, But she's never taken me on as like a student first. So she's met me several times and
I'm sure she thinks I'm a nice young man. So for me, it's like all of these things too. Like I
actually am trans. So I was assigned female at birth and yet, you know, now people do often
perceive me as a nice young man not understanding that. Women perceive me as an older
women perceive me as a nice, polite young man, but not understanding that I have these
things in common with them. And I wish that that was easier. Bridge the gap for me
sometimes like these things about my identity, sometimes they can be barriers to people
recognizing who I actually am. You know, there's multiple ways in which I it's hard for
people to perceive where I actually am. It's not just on the lines of ethnicity for me, but also
in terms of my gender, how I am perceived and also being perceived not just as trans but as
queer. Sometimes that's a drawback. I think it can create an outsider status for me and. Out of
respect. I don't you know, I can't really push myself on people. It's like they have to get to
know me and trust me and see that I'm worthy of receiving traditions. But that being said,
there is definitely homophobia and transphobia and there is also, for good reason, suspicions
of people. Wanting to learn techniques and traditions. And in my case, I have like blue eyes.
So it's like whether I'm fully recognized as it just depends on the person if they really see that.
Who I am and where I come from. And that is my all. It is also my sort of inherited culture.
But people might not see that at first glance, just looking at me. I show up within a group of
people I meet and I'm there to work on it. I might be the only person with blue eyes. People
might be like, Who is this guy from Marfa, Texas?
Tracy Fenix [00:20:20] I like the idea of the active. Gratitude and kinship. I think
there's a there's a deep level of kinship within Adobe practice that that is shared across
the Southwest region. And you mentioned that you started hosting mud plastering
parties. So I'm curious to know like. You know, how was that received? And also, is that
your way and, you know, opening up these very communal, celebratory, you know, you
know, social engagement parties to just sort of share the knowledge?
Miguel Mendias [00:21:07] Exactly. Sorry. I think that in a way, getting back to the original
question that you asked me. Yeah. Is my goal in in having those parties and workshops is to
sort of fill that gap even for myself. But also what I realized is that I'm going to have to I
think what I've been thinking about this year is that I need to invite the connections that I
have right now to people, my friends that live here in Marfa that are also Indigenous mixed,
Indigenous female assigned and queer and non-binary like these people actually do exist. And
now I have more the community of that here. So these are the people that I really want to
invite to my next workshop. The truth is, like at prior workshops, I had. To my surprise,
people showed up that I wasn't expecting, including a few people, the minority. But there was
definitely at least one or two people that I thought, you know, I'll let this guy work on my
house. But he's obviously here because he thinks that in one afternoon of working with me,
he's going to be an expert and now he can sell his services at whatever an insane amount.
Like there is this colonizer mentality that shows up at these workshops. There's also a lot of
people that show up because they just they're white tourists and they want to put it on their
Instagram. I had to grapple with that when people showed up to my art class or workshop,
like, Is it okay that they're literally just here to be a cultural tourist and show it off on their
Instagram? Like, for me, that's so not what it's about. And that doesn't really build community
or or does it? What kind of community does that build? It's another question I have, but I've
had to sort of accept all of it. When people are coming to help, I'm not going to turn them
down. But I did struggle with that at first. Like these people are here for very selfish reasons
131
Mud Kin interview with Miguel Mendias by Tracy Fenix, January 28, 2023.
and that was not the impetus for creating this space. So do I. You know, I think I even got
upset one time and I just told myself by a specific person who I already knew showed up and
he was the last person I thought would show up. And I thought. I went to an older practice I
have where I decided that whoever shows up, it's the right time in the right place and I'm not
going to I'm going to keep the space open and not turn this person away. And I just tried that
on for a day. And at the end of the day, I was like, okay, great. He doesn't know what he's
doing. I let him plaster my house and it's totally fine. And I actually just appreciate the help.
So I went with it and it was okay. But in the future, I'm thinking about how I can, you know,
the goal is really to share knowledge with people that would benefit the most from it. And I
don't mean in a capital capitalizing sense, but I mean, who will benefit on these deeper
personal levels where they are reconnecting to their heritage, their own culture, their own
cultural practices and they deserve to have access to it and not be pushed to the sidelines
because a white tourist thinks it would make a cool photo opportunity for themselves, that
they can say that they have this cultural experience that is not from their culture. So that's
definitely something I've had to grapple.
Tracy Fenix [00:24:32] Glamor to the idea of this colonizer mentality and the way that's
embedded in the, you know, the impacts of, you know, land artists who like dancers who
went there. And now there's this huge, like reenactment of sort of just like hyper
consumer culture in a very small rural art town. What is now like Marfa, like, you
know? I think. Can you can you talk a little bit about the work that you've done with
Sandro Canovas in in Marfa in terms of your expenses? Campaigning for the “Adobe is
a Political” campaign and like in what changes you have seen in Adobe Adobe housing
since, you know, since this the impacts of gentrification.
Miguel Mendias [00:25:33] Sure. I wouldn't say too quickly to a word about Donald Judd,
the artist who came to Marfa in the 1970s. I can't. I know he gets blamed a lot for the
gentrification here. And but I really I can't do that. I put him in a class completely by himself.
I don't think you know, I don't know. I'm not sure. I can't fully say what his intentions were,
but he was he really is in the class of his own even as an artist. Like, sure, he came to Marfa
and he bought up what at the time was completely abandoned buildings and real estate. But
he did things that are just and typical of Anglos that come to this area. Like, for instance, he
bought all these ranches and he named them after the family that he bought them from and he
sought to preserve them. So he's very different, even in the art world of an artist who
obviously appreciated indigenous culture to the extent that he was like a huge collector of
like Diné, Navajo artifacts and like, that's all very complicated. But his legacy of preservation
also puts him in a really different category than most. Most other Anglos even who come to
this area. So I don't know. He's separate. He goes separate by himself. I have the word
gentrification like is happening in LA for sure. It's happening all over the place. That's a
much, much deeper issue and I actually take it I actually don't like that word at all. Instead of
talking about gentrification, I'd rather talk about class violence and I'd rather talk about
ongoing colonization. Education is like the housing issue, and, you know, that just goes into
housing as a human right. But really what we really want to talk about is actually like the
class violence that occurs and the harm that occurs from that class violence. And
gentrification is complicated because the truth is also I often explain to my friends here like, I
wouldn't eat, I personally wouldn't be here in Marfa if it weren't for Donald Judd, which is
ironic because I'm a fifth generation Marfa. But I would not be able to be here without
Donald Judd. I'm able to support I it's like it's still hard to make a living here, but I have
service industry jobs that did not exist. It's very different living in Marfa than it would be
132
Mud Kin interview with Miguel Mendias by Tracy Fenix, January 28, 2023.
living even in like Van Horn. And I'm very aware of that. So. There is a larger I mean, there
are a lot of conversations that are happening in Marfa about. But they're not just. They're not.
Sorry they are. They aren't singular to Marfa whatsoever. They're like larger issues that we're
having. And sorry if I didn't fully answer your question either.
Tracy Fenix [00:28:39] No, thank you. I think it's important to discern the realities because
they're very specific regionally. And I, I think it is important to create to connect the local to
the the global. And in this way, thinking through these concepts of class, class violence and
discrimination we're working through, what are the undertones of what we're grappling with.
So. So I appreciate you sharing that. Yeah. Yeah.
Miguel Mendias [00:29:18] And, you know, I don't I mean, I think it also comes down to the
fact that I identify as an artist, even though in our society what that means is typically you are
producing in a sort of a luxury good for the elite. That's how the art world market functions. I
don't put that on the artists though. Yeah, that's the society that we live in. That's a bigger
construct. So it's like, I can't blame you know, I don't blame the artist for that, for like,
capital. In fact, for me, art is one of the few spaces where you can talk about all those things
that, you.
Miguel Mendias [00:29:59] It's like a safer place for me to be able to examine all of these
issues the way larger societal constructs. And they're conscious of colonization.
Tracy Fenix [00:30:09] Absolutely right.
Tracy Fenix [00:30:21] So I'm going to start the recording now, but things can be edited.
And I mean, I think there's a way to talk about the ways that, like, a dogma is being
reappropriated across the landscape because this is happening in Marfa, what's
happening in Tucson? It's happening in Santa Fe and Albuquerque. So I think it's a
lived reality for many who are sharing this. Little more experience. And I'm wondering
in terms of the dog attacks in Presidio County, like what? How does that show up there
and what what changes have you seen? And also how have you advocated towards
building equitable housing standards or equitable living folks who are multi-
generational families and in adobe homes?
Miguel Mendias [00:31:25] Yeah, well, like other parts of the country and definitely in
Texas, we have a major pressing, pressing issue that everyone is talking about in terms of
property taxes and affordability of housing, including the rental market, but also about. But
also the increase in property tax is making it harder and harder for families to own their own
home. That's a huge issue in Texas and the housing shortage, and it's also a big issue in
Marfa, unlike other places. So in Marfa, in Presidio County, our county, they hired a well,
they have an ongoing contract with an outside advisor to advise the county that the way to
deal with their property taxes discrepancy between the state and the county was that we
should charge we should raise the rates on property taxes on homes made out of an all day to
be 58% higher than homes made out of any other building material. So they created a special
schedule. And this schedule, as far as we can tell, it's unique. It's there's nothing like it that
exists anywhere else in the U.S. or anywhere else that we can find where only homes made of
this one material are going to be taxed at a rate 58% higher than any other material. And in a
public meeting, when I asked this lawyer why he had devised this special schedule, they call
133
Mud Kin interview with Miguel Mendias by Tracy Fenix, January 28, 2023.
it this classification. The tax rate for home is made out of it, though they did very bluntly said
that. We have a lot of families in this town, in that town, that own their homes. The title is
unclear. So then the other properties sort of fall become abandoned because the family can't
easily sell it sometimes without it. Unclear title and that the county needs to get these people
off those homes, out of these family homes and essentially flip them. And he said that Adobe
was trendy and that people moving in from elsewhere want to buy an Adobe home off this
old Mexican-American family who can't afford their property taxes anymore. So he's not
incorrect that Adobe is trendy and it's trendy to come to Marfa and buy an Adobe home and
buy a fixer upper and flip it or turn it into a rental Airbnb short term rental. That's true. But
my problem with what he said is that the county is not and it is not their job to flip homes. So
for instance, the house that I'm working on was on the auction list to be sold off by the county
for unpaid property taxes. What was owed on that house was about 13 grand, and yet it was
on the auction list. So for the for the inability to pay 13 grand, the house was going to be
auctioned off for probably starting at at least 38 or 40 grand and possibly selling for 100
grand or more at auction. That just doesn't make sense. Why would you take someone's
family home and sell it at auction for that huge of a profit when the family only owes 13
grand on a house? And the county told me that typically they don't put homes to auction
unless they owe more than 30 grand on the house. That's what they said. But I went down the
auction road myself, and that particular house that I'm talking about may have been an
outlier, but it wasn't the only one. What I really took offense that so was this lawyer. His
name is Richard Petrie, and I took offense at his comments, knowing that literally he's paid
with tax dollars to advise the county on how they should structure their property taxes. And
he said that we need to get these people out of those homes and flip those home. Some are
very offensive. So that my goal this year is to have that Adobe tax or really it's a schedule
completely abolish like it's totally racist and we need to abolish it. There's no doubt. And
there's many ways that we can be in compliance with the state of Texas regarding our taxes
without unfairly punishing people who live in multi-generational family homes. So there's
just other ways to do it. And it ignores the fact that the reason our property taxes are so high
in Marfa, Texas, is because people move. People who have homes elsewhere in L.A.,
London, Berlin, New York. They may come and buy a home in our county or remodel a
house or sell a house or build a new house. And it might be a million or 2 million or $3
million home. And then that raises the property taxes for everybody here. So that's the actual
problem we have. And then, you know, it's like when someone builds $1,000,000 home in
Marfa, they don't they aren't they're increasing the property taxes for all of us because that's
how the state calculates what our taxes should be based on new construction and based on the
market value of homes that are selling. And when you live in a place where a lot of homes are
getting flipped, but those those are still a minority, you know, there's a minority of wealth
here. The average income in Marfa, I think the median the median income in Marfa was like
$29,000. I think it's a little bit higher now from the most latest census. But I don't I not to get
too much into the details of that, but it is a complicated thing to explain how the property
taxes work. But yes. Essentially, we have a special tax against Adobe homes in Marsh in
Presidio County. It's the only thing that exists like that in the entire country. And based on the
comments from the person who created that special classification, I think it's a straight up
racist tax, you know?
Tracy Fenix [00:37:58] Thank you for showing that. I think in these ways this is how it's
preventable to have a housing. You know, incentive that actually prioritizes keeping families
in their homes and rather than having an adult be tax.
134
Mud Kin interview with Miguel Mendias by Tracy Fenix, January 28, 2023.
Miguel Mendias [00:38:18] And he tried to tell me he was real incredibly. Patronizing
towards me and try to tell me. Well, Miguel, you don't sin this public meeting like this is just
the market and this is just how the market works. And I think my response to him was like,
look, please don't lecture me on guns and butter. We absolutely can devise different ways to
raise our taxes that are that are equitable and fair without doing this to our most vulnerable
residents who typically are like elderly people. Marfa is just like I mean, in terms of like them
not being able to preserve their homes for future generations. They are over 65. You do have
a cap on your property taxes any way. But what this creates is such a it's like those. So if
you're over 65, you won't have your house taken away from you in Marfa, Texas, but you
won't be able to leave it to the next generations because you create such a burden, a backlog
on it, that it's really hard for people to take over the family property. So then they're force,
they can't fix them up, they're forced to sell them or abandoned them, and then the county
sells them at auction. And there's we as a community. I had said to that man was that we as a
community like it's just a way complicated. It's more complicated issue than what he was
making it to like. Yeah, we're not in compliance with the state, but we weren't and that's why
we needed to raise taxes here. But that's a much deeper, bigger issue and it's all across the
state. And you see that in our state politics right now. You know, supposedly they are going
to do another home, a bigger homestead exemption, I think up to 70 grand. It's like that's the
ongoing conversation right now. And it's it's stupid to for him to assume that the average
person can't be part of that conversation. Like, we don't understand how the market works.
It's very incredibly insulting and offensive isn't.
Tracy Fenix [00:40:31] Where do you see your work going for the future practice
working within Latinx and Indigenous communities?
Miguel Mendias [00:40:56] I think about that a lot. And. I think about how, you know, as I
age, how I will step up and really want to. Make things easier in some ways for the next
generation. Make it easier for them to find what they need, whether that is skills or traditional
knowledge or support in just claiming their own identity. All the things that have been hard
for me, of course, wanting to make it easier for younger generations to find. Their way or a
path even. And so and so I'm always thinking about that. Whatever I have to do that is
difficult or hard for me because sometimes I feel like I'm really forging my own path in
certain ways. And a lot of that does have to do with identity. But I always think, well, if I can
if I can make this path and it makes it easier for someone else who is going to face the same
problems as me, if if I can start clearing the way a little bit for them. It's a very. It's a very
broad answer, but maybe in the more immediate that looks like for me, I'd like to start in the
next year. I'd like to start a nonprofit that is focused on the sort of work that we've been doing
here, including the activism and the social practice and the community based practice. So
being able to have a nonprofit maybe where we could get more people involved and secure
funding because a lot of everything that we do right now is at this total grassroots level and
we pay for it ourselves out of pocket. We have to take time off of work to do it, and we put
all of our own resources, including money time, some money as time into it. And so I think
I'd like to do that. I'd like to open up more public space for exhibition that will bring all of the
place where people can encounter all of these issues sort of on their own, in their own terms,
where the space is open and they can come in and engage and have their own experience of
it. So having a space, once my house is finished, once it's finished wiring and plastering it, I
want to open it up and create more of a place of engagement and community dialog using that
as the place. What else? Oh, definitely. Getting the Adobe tax abolished and mounting a huge
campaign and using the help of fellow artists to do that. And I think about the personal
135
Mud Kin interview with Miguel Mendias by Tracy Fenix, January 28, 2023.
connections they've made in the last year with the specifically with certain friends here who
are younger than me and wanting to. Wanting to get them more involved. A lot of these
things are really intimidating to people. I currently work part time in construction and it's
completely male dominated field and I'm often. Other than some of the like. There are other
laborers there, especially Mexican-American laborers. But often I find myself working with
all white men. And I'm very much like a double or triple minority. And sometimes I'm the
only person who's Hispanic on the site and the only person who is female assigned for sure.
I'm the only queer person and I'm the only trans person. And learning all these skills is
intimidating, but I've been learning them. So of course I'd like to make them more accessible
to other queer people, to other trans people, to female assigned people, to non-binary people
to. People that have you know, that would. And I want to make it a safer environment for
people to learn those things as well. So and unfortunately, that. Does someone extend to
Adobe as well? The people I know in town who have Adobe projects going on where they
also maybe have some community workshops, it tends to be a more those spaces are more
tied to the cultural, the elites here, people that move to Marfa with nice jobs and have the
time and stuff. And. And more to Anglo as well. Yeah, I don't really see that happening. In a
way, I'd like to see it happening in our community here amongst black Latin people and
young people. And I think there's many, many reasons for that. It's really hard to find the time
or the resources, for instance, or the right teachers. And I know I told you privately about a
project in Marfa that was seeking to teach women and people of color like plastering skills
specifically, and how many that wasn't well resourced, well funded program, but it ended up
having a lot of practical issues in terms of for everything from who they brought in to teach to
who the students were. You know, it was like. I think that had a lot of issues and there's a lot
of reasons for that. But that's what we have to contend with. And we have to acknowledge
that. And if we just have to build what we want. We have to build it ourselves. But we want
to see. We just have to really try to find the will. It's really hard sometimes if you're just in
survival mode here, you're just trying to make a living and most people can't even afford to.
A lot of my peers rent or even my my cousin who lives here who's like my age, she has a
family. She's from here, born and raised here, and she comes from like four or at least four
generations, like land owning Mexican American, like people she rents here.
Miguel Mendias [00:47:21] And how are you going to have time to go to an Adobe
workshop? Like she's raising a family and just working to survive? These are the challenges
that we're.
Tracy Fenix [00:47:29] Right. Right. Yeah, I. I, I think it's very inspiring to think through
these critical issues, but also. See your vision, set the tone for your future work. And so I
think there's a lot that you're working through conceptually, and that is also very rooted in.
And in shaping the to the field, I thought around you and in alignment with others. So we had
think thank you so much for sharing everything that you share and I appreciate your time and
energy opening up to me.
Miguel Mendias [00:48:22] Oh yeah, I it's really great. I'm very excited for your project. So,
I mean, what you're doing is very useful. And I know that I like to think that the networks
that you're putting together, I mean, it exists over saying, but being able to for me to see it
and find it is actually, I'm sure, going to be really useful and helpful. And even just when I
first met you, like knowing like, oh, you already talk to this person. This person, I was like,
136
Mud Kin interview with Miguel Mendias by Tracy Fenix, January 28, 2023.
you know that person, but I never work with them. And I was like, Maybe I really should try,
like, try to make it or because we have these things in common. Yeah.
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Abstract (if available)

Abstract A contemporary cohort of Indigenous, Latinx, and Immigrant artists and activists working in the southwestern United States are engaging with ancestral adobe structures and construction to resist artistic, cultural, and ecological assimilation. Predominant expressions of land-based art and environmental activism in the US have historically ignored Indigenous and Latinx contributions, and at the same time, acquiring critical reception or scholarly notice has been tied to the whitewashing of cultural signifiers. These artists and activists preserve ancestral adobe and ecological practices to keep its roots within Indigenous heritage while promoting its inclusion to canonical land-based artworks and also promoting its environmental sustainability in the deserts of the Southwest. Through the creation and care of adobe-based art and ecological infrastructure, they are staging interventions against displacement and a loss of cultural memory caused by settler colonialism and other oppressive regimes of power. Fenix's MA thesis exhibition narrates their ancestral native adopted frontera relationality alongside their family to chart how these artists use adobe to create physical and imagined homes of resistance, threading within it a subjective narrative through the ancestral lands of First Nation and Mexican people in the southwestern United States, to reorient future scholarship on land-based art and activism toward its ancestral, Indigenous coordinates--those of community belonging and ecological sustainability. It’s also one component of a larger “Mud Kin” ongoing project that will encompass an archive of interviews and photographs and other interventions that express Indigenous placekeeping, as well as an exhibition, a publication, and an ArchGIS mapping tool.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Fenix, Tracy (author)

Core Title Mud kin: mapping adobe and land-based indigenous and Latinx projects form southern California to west Texas

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

School Roski School of Art and Design

Degree Master of Urban Planning / Master of Arts

Degree Program Urban Planning / Curatorial Practices and the Public Sphere

Degree Conferral Date 2023-08

Publication Date 08/16/2023

Defense Date 07/25/2023

Publisher University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Adobe,and reclamation.,body as archives,contemporary art,cultural heritage,curatorial practices,environmental activism,First nation people,frontera,indigenous art,indigenous knowledge,indigenous storytelling,Interviews,land art,land back,land practices,land stewardship,Latinx art,Latinx storytelling,Mexican indigenous peoples,OAI-PMH Harvest,placekeeping,radical documentation,settler colonialism,southwest borderlands,traditional ecological knowledge,Urban Planning

Language English

Advisor Lin, Jenny (committee chair), Kim, Annette Miae (committee member), Lacy, Suzanne (committee member)

Creator Email fenix@usc.edu,tracynfenix@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC113298174

Unique identifier UC113298174

Identifier etd-FenixTracy-12259.pdf (filename)

Legacy Identifier etd-FenixTracy-12259.pdf

Document Type Thesis

Rights Fenix, Tracy

Internet Media Type application/pdf

Type texts

Source 20230816-usctheses-batch-1085 (batch), University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

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Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu