[Abraham Cruzvillegas: Autoconstrucción]
You can see, we have all this rebar coming out
from the roofs of autoconstrucción houses
as people think they can keep building--
making new room for new members of the family and so on...
This is my father, with his cane--
his walking stick.
My mother,
my sister Eréndira,
and Chucho, my brother.
My parents decided to expand and to construct more
because we grew up.
We became teenagers
and we needed independent rooms.
We started building down...
in the back there, rooms for Rosa and for my brothers and me.
And a new kitchen.
But it was very slow.
Autoconstrucción is more about self-constructing
or constructing your own house.
I like the term because, for me,
it leads me to think on the construction of identity.
This is where my father used to brush his teeth.
So he had here a small tub with water and he...
to wash...
and spit here on the tree,
covering, in white, the bricks,
as you can see there.
So it was, kind of, a slow painting.
My father had an accident--
a car accident.
And then he wasn't able to walk anymore
and he was on a wheelchair.
And then we built the ramps
all around the house.
And here,
the stairs, you can see,
they change because it's for the wheelchair, here.
All the additions--
furniture and so on--
we did many of these things ourselves.
That's why they are so badly done.
They are ridiculously made because they are not made by experts.
I never tried to illustrate this,
but to use it as a source of energy
for my work.
[Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN]
--Yeah.
--It's good.
Many of my works are definitely unfinished voluntarily.
When you look at the roofs of the houses
and there is this rebar coming out there
like an optimistic hope of being finished,
that’s my reference, I would say.
I don't want to represent houses,
or parts of houses
or illustrate autoconstrucción,
but to activate the dynamics of autoconstrucción in my work.
Like, improvising--
doing things with whatever you have at hand.
Not thinking that much in an architectonic
or tectonic way,
but more like answering to immediate needs
like a playfulness, for instance.
--It's from the hotel!
And I think what I like, a lot of these constructions--
these houses that all overlap together,
the houses and the people,
you know, like the activities and the energy.
You can see through them.
They are transparent, let's say.
This is my ideal of what an identity should be,
transparent.
We go through a long, long path to become ourselves.
I'm still constructing myself.
I just want to understand who I am
and where I come from.
And I come from Marcel Duchamp,
I come also from Colony Ajusco.
I come from Eduardo Costa.
And I come from David Medalla.
And I come from autoconstrucción.
And I come from Mexico.
What can I say? [LAUGHS]