Letters of Compass, an installation and performance series created by the art collective LAZO, opens at The Clemente on January 29th, 2022. The installation includes a central platform structure inspired by the four cardinal points that acts as a bridge, a podium, a crossroads, and a stage. Along the walls are reproduced photographs of sky gathered from throughout the Americas, printed with analog and digital methods. A series of the images are printed on envelopes making reference to the materiality of an epistolary practice, now almost defunct through the immediacy of digital correspondence. Both collaborative and participatory, Letters of Compass addresses relations that have been deeply severed during the pandemic, such as communication, travel, and physical interaction.
The central structure is elevated above the floor and inscribed upon it are slots that open to a sandbed below. Visitors are invited to deposit notes, drawings, photographs, and small ephemera here—these items will form part of a culminating publication that documents the materials gathered during the exhibition. The bed of sand acts similarly, accumulating marks and traces of interaction over time. Like a compass rose (rosa de los vientos / rosa dos ventos), the platform’s shape suggests cardinal points and the possibility of orienting oneself within the various prints and photographs on the gallery walls.
The surrounding images point to nowhere and everywhere. The earth’s expansive sky is often depicted as a site for endless contemplation and experiences of the sublime, yet it is also a universal ground for navigation, political contestation, human pollution, and a vast range of complex conditions that define the human experience. The processes LAZO has used––screenprint, cyanotype, and digital prints––suggest the extent to which humanity's relationships with the sky have become idealized and fragmented. The delicacy of these works on paper may speak to the fragility of our current relationships to the physical world.
LAZO’s installation is an invitation to meditate on cielo y tierra / céu e terra: How do we center in times of severed relationships and limited encounters? How do we open space for contemplation and collaboration when our focus is subsisting day-to-day? Today's notions of creativity and spontaneity seem to be overruled by monetization and separations: separations between bodies, screens, and geographical distance. Additionally, our invaluable moments of contemplation are often mediated through algorithms outside of us. How do we reorient ourselves with other beings, spaces, and time?
“La única forma de sobrevivir es mirando el cielo” (the only way to survive is looking at the sky) writes invited poet Mia Maurer as the final line of her poem La única forma de sobrevivir las matemáticas, printed as a cyanotype scroll for the occasion of the exhibition. In the piece, Maurer reflects on the definitions of a series of words, expanding their usual meanings through associations as if the terms were sifting clouds, observing natural states of impermanence. Meanings fade in and out, revealing the constant shifting of language and thoughts..
Letters of Compass invites participants to create new ways of engaging collectively, and rethink both contemporary and historic forms of communication and image-making. Visitors can experience an array of textures generated through printing methods that abstract and only come into full resolution in the postcard-sized photographs. The installation and performances address imposed practices of separation that are prevalent in our current times by creating a space for artists to propose new centers and directions. The poetics of image and word, the earth and the compass, are offerings LAZO's artists and their collaborators give us to navigate this moment of tempests.
text by Tatiane Santa Rosa
LAZO (in Spanish meaning ‘tie’ or ‘link’) is an art collective that brings together artists and related practitioners of Latin American & Caribbean descent to create participatory projects and exhibitions. LAZO’s members are Rodrigo Moreira, Claudia Cortínez, Mauricio Cortes Ortega, and Alva Mooses.
Collective installation by LAZO at The Clemente Center 2022. Photos courtesy of LAZO.