Using everyday objects and discarded materials gathered across the terrain of Los Cabos, this work by Abraham Cruzvillegas gravitates—both conceptually and physically—around notions of labor, landscape, and what the artist calls its mineral soul or ánima. Designed specifically for Arte Abierto’s opening at Ánima Village architectural complex, the piece will be assembled on-site using materials drawn from the immediate environment.

Its colors, materials, and very mode of construction emerge as much from cultural and social references as from the artist’s own personal history. The pink and green palette recalls the flag of the Mangueira favela and samba school in Rio de Janeiro, which Cruzvillegas visited in 2003 during a pilgrimage to the place where Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica used to go dancing samba. This encounter became a turning point in Cruzvillegas’s practice: Mangueira reminded him of the neighborhood where he grew up—Colonia Ajusco, built on the lava fields of Coyoacán in southern Mexico City. It awakened subjective memories of how, in the face of unequal wealth distribution, people find ways to adapt, building their own homes collaboratively with whatever materials they can gather—conditions shared by favelas, bidonvilles, shantytowns, callampas, tomas, slums, villas miseria, chabolas, informal settlements, baraccopoli, and other forms of autoconstrucción.

Cruzvillegas’s piece embodies the spirit of Arte Abierto, the region’s first public art gallery at the heart of Cabo del Sol. The work opens a dialogue about the place of art within its social and geographical context, shaped and frame d by the surrounding natural environment.

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Abraham Cruzvillegas (Mexico City, 1968) artistic process is deeply influenced by his surroundings. Instead of being defined by a particular medium, many of his projects connect through the idea of autoconstrucción: a concept that draws from the ingenious, precarious, and collaborative building tactics implemented by the people living in Colonia Ajusco, his childhood neighborhood in Mexico City. Cruzvillegas adopts an approach based on inventive improvisation and instability, presenting change as a permanent state, emerging from the chaotic and fragmentary nature of life. The evolving notion of autoconstrucción has, in turn, generated explorations into similar concepts, such as autodestrucción and autoconfusión. These inquiries have led the artist not only to explore his own origins, but to collaborate with family and friends in a very personal form of research, resulting in a constant process of learning: about materials, landscape, people, and himself.

Through various media, including sculpture, painting, drawing, installation, and video, Cruzvillegas reveals a close and constant engagement with the material world—immersing himself in the ongoing construction and transformation of personal and collective identities. His sculptures challenge prevailing conceptions of art making by using a wide range of collected objects, while his paintings and drawings depict subjects with a strong sense of humor, instilled by his early training as a political cartoonist. Parallel to his artistic production, Cruzvillegas has cultivated writing as an investigative tool of self-analysis that merges history, criticism, and fiction. His lyrics and texts about art, politics, and culture constitute a significant element of his practice.

Cruzvillegas studied Pedagogy from 1986 to 1990 at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) in Mexico City, while simultaneously attending Gabriel Orozco’s workshop, Taller de los viernes. In 2012, he was the 5th winner of the Yanghyun Prize and received the Prix Altadis d’arts plastiques in 2006.

Cruzvillegas lives and works in Mexico City.

IG @autoconstruido

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