Best known for his sculptural works that bring ready-mades such as scrap wood, handmade craft, and simple tools together in strangely familiar compositions, Abraham Cruzvillegas seeks to develop an art practice engaged with his everyday surroundings.
Here Cruzvillegas presents a two-channel video installation in which his parents share stories about their commitment to build a house and a sense of home in Ajusco, a part of Mexico City once thought to be uninhabitable. Through individual yet interconnected dialogues, Ángeles Fuentes and Rogelio Cruzvillegas recall developing a social architecture based on collaboration between friends and family that arose parallel with–and perhaps in solidarity against–the fragmented process of building that physically defines the neighborhood to this day. He has explored autoconstrucción (roughly translated as “self-construction”), a methodology and form of building that utilizes improvised construction techniques and materials in response to particular needs.
Cruzvillegas’s practice of autoconstrucción extends beyond the gallery walls to affect other public platforms: the artist plans to publish photographs of Ajusco’s autoconstrucción in the newspaper Korea Economic Daily as well as project them on the Media Canvas at Seoul Square.
