MP: Hearing your question, The Volcano Lover, a novel by Susan Sontag about Vesuvius that I read many years ago, popped into my head. One reviewer of that book described Naples as “the capital of natural disasters,” but I think Mexico City, with its earthquakes and volcanoes, is the real capital. The geography of the city is molded by the eruption of the Xitle volcano, and walls made by volcanic rock are abundant in the city. Aztecs constructed their pyramids with these rocks, and the Spanish disassembled those structures and re-purposed the material to build their churches. People try to polish and shape those rocks, but the rocks re-assert their identity – they resist human control and cannot be fully domesticated. At the UNAM, the National University in Mexico City, in many ways the cultural heart of the city, a massive compound of several acres is built on volcanic rock. Two other volcanoes — the Iztacihuatl and the Popocatepl, the latter still active — are entwined in the lives of the people of the Central Plateau. They are our Mount Fuji. Growing up on the top floor of a small apartment building the volcanoes were ever present, presiding over our days – if we were able to see their peaks, pollution wasn’t that bad; if we saw that the Popo had a white coat it meant that we needed to put our coats on. So to answer your question, yes, I grew up with volcanoes and I think a lot about their force, the material they carry, the latent energy and the vibration that they produce in the earth. And I also think about their central role in the mythology of Mexico, a mythology which, far from being lost, remains a powerful presence in the social fabric.

MP: Glacier on top of a volcano, I need to see that! I was looking into the Cotopaxi and it seems to be very similar to the Popocatepetl – both are conical and both are active and while I was searching I found a slightly sentimental poem about both volcanoes by W. J. Turner.

Speaking of my interest in the underworld, I wonder if my attachment to this myth comes from a need to feel grounded in a country (the U.S.) where history is often  diminished and where I certainly have no roots. I’m not sure if I have always been this symbolically oriented or if my many years in psychoanalysis created a mental disposition for such tendencies. I know that mental and real trips to Mexico form part of my current persona. Over the years I continue to gather  physical remnants of these mythologies, and when I can’t physically go to Mexico, I get my mom to send me materials. I see the same happen with other Mexican friends – they need certain ingredients and objects to feel at home, even if it’s just for a brief period.

I’m interested in the underworld, and my direct experience with volcanoes are a big part of that interest. But there are other objects linked to both Mexico and to geological forces – obsidian, for example, which was used extensively in pre-Colombian cultures, and raw tar, which was also used by native cultures. Sometimes obsidian is the material that speaks loudest to me; other times it is tar, ink, or charcoal (the latter two being very familiar drawing materials that are also drawn from the earth). The obsidians are fascinating, being the direct fruit of a volcanic explosion – there is so much wealth of information in a single token. From the ashes and the blackness of the obsidians grew the curiosity to work with tar and activated charcoal. I see all of these materials as speaking of a similar experience, being forced by natural forces colliding to be what they are, and concurrently by playing a key role in the spiritual and healing practices in many indigenous cultures.

Thinking specifically about mythology one Aztec deity that comes to mind is Tezcatlipoca; he is dualistic and has many egos and multiple representations. The specialists talk about him as a god that is capricious and fickle and takes over the infra-world, the earth and the sky (like an obsidian formed by the chemicals mixing when a volcano erupts). For me the most interesting aspect of this god is that in some representations he wears two round mirrors, smoking mirrors made of obsidian: one attached to his foot (for guidance on earth?) and the other on his headdress (for guidance in the sky?). When confronted with others the mirrors are used to reveal deep truths.

In street markets outside of museums and archeological sites, it is easy to find obsidian figurines and reproductions of these mythical mirrors for sale to tourists. In the last 6 years when I’ve gone back to Mexico, I make an effort to purchase my souvenirs, which I use in drawings and performances made back in the US.

MP: I had to go and look up the word awe; I have used it over the years but wanted to be sure I understood the real meaning. I thought that it was a kind of onomatopoeia, and I guess it is, sounding a bit like a short breath or lament. I was also looking for a poem in one of the many native tongues, but I couldn’t find anything (being only a Spanish speaker puts some limitations on my search). I don’t know if you have heard about the tiemperos? Tiemperos (Time keepers, though the word “tiempo” is understood equally to mean time and weather) are chosen people who are in charge of creating a bridge between the volcano’s will and the residents of nearby villages. The tiemperos communicate to villagers about changes in weather (which are attributed to the volcano) and they are in charge of organizing pilgrimages to the top of the volcano. There are many beautiful rituals involved, and the more I think about them, the more these rituals make sense to me as perhaps the closest approximation to “poetry” as we (outside this culture) understand it. In an animistic paradigm, there is no meaningful boundary between poetry, religion, and philosophy – they are all distilled versions of an everyday reality in which everything is “truth” (and everything is “awe”).

Back to the tiemperos, I recall an image from a documentary on el Popocatepetl that a good friend of mine made: Don Antonio, the tiempero, is filling CocaCola bottles with water, sealing them with wax and, from bottle to bottle, delicately connecting a colorful skein of yarn – he then digs holes and sets the bottles into the ground around the skirt of the volcano. My grandfather wasn’t exactly a tiempero, but my mom tells me that he used to do a ritual that involved a ceramic plate, seeds and prayers to call for rain (and she said it always worked). When you directly witness these situations in your family there’s not much space for irony. I’m fully aware that my disposition away from irony comes in part from being raised in a Catholic family which comes with many complications. I work hard to untangle the damage that came with being a woman raised under the Catholic oppressive powers, and from that syncretism I chose to keep the pagan part.

MP: I hear you when you talk about awe and irony. Certainly, nature with its ungraspable dimensions is not something that I can aspire to take with me; a token or a memory, as we were talking before, is the only part that I am capable of recollecting – something bigger would be contemptuous. All of this also makes me think about your work, in which it’s not really the immensity that you want to take with you, although you still manage to name the parts. Am I right? One-four minute year, the title of one of your sound pieces, somehow summarizes my thought.

You asked about “familiar awe,” and I guess I would call that “reverence.” Seeing something grandiose for the first time – say, a canyon – is definitely awe-producing but going back to my country produces a different kind of surprise, it feels like a continuum and an anchoring and a humbling exercise. I travel to other places besides Mexico, but not that much, because the only time and money that I have left I tend to save it to visit my family and my country. The sense of wonder then shifts to an observational state where places and people slowly, and occasionally abruptly, change. Sometimes I wonder if reverence is also related to class: I grew up knowing that not everything that lay in front of my eyes was for my grabbing, consumption, nor even my understanding! Irony sometimes seems to be too comfortable in its presumption that it can take ownership over and possess an idea or an object.

I’m going to go ahead and describe the drawing-performance relationship. Most of the works on paper are derived from body actions; they are small “local” rituals that involve hugging, biting and spooning with the paper. Before the action, though, I fold the edges of the paper onto itself, as if the paper needed to recognize itself as a tactile material before I impose my force and weight on it. My approach with the surfaces varies – sometimes I make my own compounds of activated charcoal that I chew and spit on the surface; other times I use a thick layer of ink or casein. The actions are finalized with subtractions and cuts made with various cutting manual and electrical tools where the fibers of the paper are exposed. Another part of the work focuses on generating “recordings” of actions; for example, a commute into the subway where I carry with me a painted paper surface, and whenever I come across a public door, I open and close it around the paper, creating folds and marks. I consider the pieces done once that they have gone through an experience in the city and they have their own urban story.

The door pieces have an element of disobedience, and with my performances this element is also very present, combined with ritual, like lighting a fire in the street or climbing a tree or inking a manhole cover, all of which are enforceable violations in the state of New York. It’s not that I go around looking for a dictionary of illegal activities but it’s also not a coincidence that the way  I want to be in the public crosses the line of what is permitted in the state of NYC. It is illegal to spit, climb a tree, and make a fire in New York City, but it happens that those same activities in Mexico (and I’m sure in many other places) are associated with ritualistic healing practices. My ideal viewer is the passerby that barely wants to look: I prefer the eyes to hold a vision rather than to hold a narrative. I get very nervous with “official” viewers, a stable audience that knows I’m doing “a performance” – they seem to expect a neat conclusion and I’m bad at closing circles.

After the performance is done another kind of token is left, or what I sometimes like to call a recording. Since the sound seminar that you and I took with Stephen Vitiello, I continue thinking about the idea of encasing sounds and actions. I believe that you do something similar, right? Like sampling the sound of a rock or ice cracking, or a piece of ether? My recordings mostly take the form of molds, rubbings, and pathology samples. Lately I’m playing on materializing words and sentences in Spanish where I masticate activated charcoal and sugar and speak phrases in Spanish into the paper. The visual results are quite medical looking, truly, like the pathology test of a lymph node.

I noticed that the work becomes more formal and minimalistic when I don’t have imported materials from Mexico on hand. In those cases, the work is mostly paper based with surfaces soaked in casein and ink, plus the hugging, tearing and folding that I was previously talking about. When I travel and personally gather materials like obsidian and tar, I often feel the need to generate a public performance, but many times I end up integrating some of these materials in the paper pieces as well. Whether I acquire the materials myself or get them from my mom, the Mexican materials are definitely associated more with ritual. So, yes, the work changes depending on the accessibility of materials, maybe an obvious consequence, but also a driving force to research more materials and to organize more actions.

MP: Hello Leah, now it is 2021; I’m just coming back from my daily walk outside. Thank you for your response. I was lingering with half-cooked responses in my head, so let’s see if something coherent comes out. I keep looking at your works through “sound” lenses, although I’m so far away from being an expert on that topic. I mostly wonder about the sounds you hear and imperceptibly (or consciously) record in your head while looking at nature. Maybe some of them slip under the door and get into your images?

There are a few things to say about habits and routines and why I don’t use those terms when talking about art. Good habits, bad habits, and simple habits have the burden of morality; they tend (or pretend) to bring order, a sense of time and structure. As good as a habit can be, it does not really tap into mystery. Routines, although necessary and healthy, also seem to go hand-in-hand with some idea of productivity, efficacy, or self-improvement. What I like about the idea of ritual is that it does not obey good morals or bad ones, it does not respond to effectiveness or sensible timing, although it might reply to cycles, it is a tick-tock that is not a device but a pulsation. A ritual does not care about convenience or judgment. I might argue that the ritual is not really a strong part of white American culture!

I used to feel awkward and out of place because I’m incredibly impractical. But over time I realized that my impractical ways and long circuitous paths can actually be valuable assets when making art. The deviations allow me to become a kind of flâneur, meandering, so that I notice things I wouldn’t have noticed otherwise. This comes into play very literally when I am gathering materials from the streets of my work, and the piece at OyG focused intensely on this aspect of my work. When choosing ritual over routine, I’m hoping to be free from the good and evil. I use it as an aspiration and as an antidote to combat the habitual.

In the case of OyG, the piece was a team effort to bring the audience closer, to make sure that the fallen tree in the forest was heard. I wanted to literally display the process and make relevant questions about origin and sources. Some people came multiple times to see the project as it was evolving, and I answered their questions in person, and I saw those interactions as part of the piece, as well as my interactions with the vendors in Sunset Park. So the making and the “narrative” were synthesized, which I guess is what needs to happen on some level in any performance, or other visual art forms, like film, that is temporal.

To answer your question about the importance of viewers knowing the narrative, I’m hoping that the form and the process can be the primary conveyors of meaning, but occasionally it is desirable, or unavoidable, to lean on narration. I am wary of the seduction of background stories because they can deviate the viewer’s attention from what is. Specific narratives are also encoded in my materials, like obsidian and tar. Just by looking at the list of materials, people know that they come from a different hemisphere. I like the work these materials do, by conveying their own history, even if they do it in a foreign language.