esteban silva
En este espacio digital*, las prácticas artísticas se presentan como categorías porosas.
Los procesos y aprendizajes se van hilando con los tejidos bioculturales que nos han querido quitar.
Sigamos imaginando...
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PROYECTOS:
00 Encuentros con el aluminio
00 Escaneo del placer
01 Vinculación afectiva
02 Mediaciones objetuales (próximamente)
03 Conversaciones desde el cuerpo-territorio
04 Actos sobre el cuerpo
05 Intervenciones vivas
06 Carrizozo Air (residencia)
*The english version of this site will be available in Autumn 2025.
D. WHAT LIVES BOTH WITHIN AND OUTSIDE
Conversation between Paula Wilson (PW) and esteban silva (ES)
(This conversation took place in Paula’s studio, Carrizozo, New México, during the last days of esteban’s Carrizozo AIR residency.)
Paula Wilson with Yucca Rising,
Photo credit: Gabriella Marks.
ES: First of all, thank you for having me here in your studio, Paula. It’s such a natural extension of you and an inspiration for the kind of space I hope to inhabit someday.
PW: Aw, it’s such a pleasure to be with you. I also had the chance to be in your temporary studio space here. I’ve been so moved to witness how you fuse gathered material and make sculptures to create an environment.
ES: I’m very happy to have you in this ongoing conversation space. This is the fourth of a series of dialogues aiming to resonate between artistic and political practices through the idea of cuerpo-territorio, a concept rooted in Latin American ecofeminism knowledge. I know you're not very familiar with it, but in reading interviews about your work, I noticed that landscape is a recurring theme.
PW: Yes, I use the term ‘landscape’, but it doesn’t entirely resonate with me. I feel there’s a deficit of words for the natural world…
ES: Surely, especially with the idea of “nature” itself. I’ve learned there’re countless consequences that start with the use of that word, so when people describe my work as a depiction of nature I say: “Actually, I’m going in the opposite direction!”
(Both of them laugh.)
PW: Exactly! The dichotomy is a separation. Do you think this idea of body-boundaries feels more resonant?
ES: It changed my life during college.
ES: Thanks to the access to ecofeminism and anticolonial knowledge many people facilitated in class, I was able to see things from a different framework.
ES: The first lesson was acknowledging my body as the first space I inhabit and the structural conflicts it constantly navigates. The second one was realizing that my personal experiences were mirroring what the geography holding me was going through.
Things have gained different meanings after those two lessons.
Paula Wilson, video still, I Am Painting, 2022.
PW: And that’s what I love about art; it’s that same sort of dance.
I think our work comes from a collective well that’s as infinite as our soul, yet we have this distinctive incarnation in the world that gives us a unique voice. It’s something to celebrate but there is also a certain kind of pain in this awareness of separation and individuality. This term body-boundaries* seems to hold both everything and oneness in our body.
ES: Which is very present in your work. Examples such as Yucca Rising present figures that are connected to the flow of the territory you’re inhabiting through time and affection. It’s a welcoming presence against racist logic that is not intimidating; it’s thriving.
PW: I really appreciate that it doesn’t feel imposing or almost aggressive in its scale. I think the things we turn our attention to become part of us. One thing that I love about how you describe your work is the idea of porousness. How we’re always participating in a constant exchange with the macro and the micro: the cultivation of the creatures that live both within and outside.
With this piece, Yucca Rising, I wanted a deeper connection with the yucca and its mutualistic relationship with its sole pollinator, the yucca moth. By making this artwork, and telling the story of their beautiful dance, I gained access to the intimate relationship exchange between the plant and insect. The act of gazing at the piece continues the process.
ES: It makes me think of the correlation between abundance and affection —which has been crucial for my investigation lately—I’m still learning to unpack what it means but I find your practice and daily life stem from that same logic**. Could you tell me more about that?
PW: A lot has come from my relationship with the love of my life, Mike Lagg. Though collaborating with someone that I'm in a relationship with, I’ve come to realize we’re part of an abundant world.
One of the harshest punishments in the United States is solitary confinement. Being separated from others is an injustice in itself. To tap into the opposite impulse is important to me. I hope to open these ideas of connection, human and non-human, that are elemental for our survival.
Paula Wilson, video still, Life Spiral, 2023
ES: On the other hand, I sense the importance of setting boundaries as well.
PW: MoMAZoZo is a great example. We’re only open Fridays from 12 to 1, but the physical and intangible structures that support it are porous. They’re meant for you to go through them. I’m alway trying to go beyond the boundaries. Sometimes I’m able to do so by showing the boundary itself. I make faux frames and faux shadows for pieces. It’s a way to communicate that this thing is aware that it’s boxed in and being presented as an artwork.
That awareness of boundaries is a way to open within them.
ES: There’s a lot of humour in that. Reminds me that participating in abundances is welcoming humour to the space.
PW: Yeah! Humour is very similar to this paradigm we were talking about. In order to understand a joke you must hold two things at once. Very anti-dichotomy in a way.
ES: It’s a nice invitation. My work is never funny, but I always admire it when others are.
Paula Wilson, Booty Mural, Carrizozo.
PW: Perhaps there's something in the questions we need to ask. What would a yucca laugh about? What kind of joke would a rock make?
(Both of them laugh. esteban picks up a green rock from the table between them.)
PW: It’s a stone I found in the railroad tracks; it has a lot of copper.
ES: Now we have enough elements to start imagining its sense of humour.
(Both of them laugh.)
ES: Thank you very much for your time, Paula.
PW: The pleasure’s all mine.
(Paula shakes a rattle to close the space, and they both eat flower petals.)
Paula Wilson is an African American "mixed media" artist creating works examining women's identities through a lens of cultural history. She uses sculpture, collage, painting, installation, and printmaking methods such as silkscreen, lithography, and woodblock. She co-founded MoMAZoZo and Carrizoz AIR residency program.