ear to the earth / culebra, truena, tormenta, 2022. Ceramic, slip cast. Artist in Residence at Greenwich House Pottery. Photos by Alan Wiener.
Alva Mooses’ new ceramic sculptures navigate the collapse of an anthropocentric, climate-damaged world. Deflated terrestrial globes—objects that emerged with the onset of colonization to map, chart, and therefore conquer land and bodies of water—sink under their own weight, creating erogenous slits and openings in the process. Broken or no longer erect, the stands designed to uphold them become inoperative. Alva’s deconstructed globes undermine the project of western geography and the violence of its measuring tools, favoring instead a world, earth, planet governed by the erotics of its own materials. Out of these ruins of colonial domination, she composes a new syntax–sentences written with pieces of the shattered globe stands immersed in porcelain tablets. Between past disasters and ominous futures, Mooses creates sculptures inviting viewers to attune their senses to the very composition of the earth— its soil and minerals—rather than to its representation.
-Mirene Arsanios
culebra, truena, tormenta
