Anthology Show 2017-2024

From July the 16th to September the 29th of 2024 was open to the public "El río de todas las vidas," an anthology exhibition that brings together her last 4 projects (2018-2024) at the ICPNA inMiraflores, Lima, Peru. The exhibition includes a catalog with texts by Florencia Portocarrero (curator of the anthology), Claudia Segura (Head of Collections at MACBA, Barcelona), Virginia Roy (curator at MUAC, Mexico), and Miguel López (co-curator of the Toronto Biennial of Art 2024, Canada and new director of Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico).

We are part of the river of all lives, a river that may not end with death, one that flows, beyond life.

My mom took a long time to die. The decline occurred over many years. The end almost seemed like it would never come. When she died, I was afraid to go recognize her body. I had never seen a corpse. A good friend of mine offered to go with me. “It’s not soawful,” she told me. The dead are peaceful. And she was right. It wasn’t as horrible as I had imagined. In death, my mom gave off an aura of peace. She had such a hard time leaving this world that the act of letting herself be swept away by the river of death seemed to have brought her some relief. 

Dying does not seem easy. The doctor who provided her with palliative care told us she wouldn’t part until all her loved ones came to say goodbye. My brother was the only one missing. I managed to convince him to come see our ailing mother, with everything this involved for him emotionally. Once we were all there — my mom, my brother, and I — contrary to all expectations, we laughed a lot. We reminisce about stories of the past. We guffawed loudly. We listened to her favorite music, we relived our travels and her friendships. We thought about my mother’s irreverent remarks, how she always said whatever came to mind without any filter whatsoever. More than once she embarrassed us when we were teenagers; but now that we were adults, with her there lying in bed, we celebrated that irreverence. We cried, too, telling her that she could go now; we thanked her for all the love she gave us and said goodbye to her. After spending all afternoon laughing, conversing, and crying at the foot of her bed, we went out.Afternoon had turned to night. We needed a drink. We found a bar; friends came to join us. It had been a long time since my brother and I had spent so many consecutive hours together. It was one of those epic days whose every last detail remains etched in our memory. That same night, as my brother and I laughed, my mom died.

Those who have lived close to death know that, in its presence, dimensions of existence open up that defy all logic. Those extreme moments seem to bring us closer to the beyond, allowing usto explore other facets of being. The only other time I felt close to those dimensions of existence was when I gave birth.

The pain of the contractions, their repetition for hours on end, pushed me into an altered state of consciousness. I went into a trance. I confused my partner with the midwife. I lost all sense of time. I had conversations with other versions of myself. No, it’s too late to be catching a taxi to the hospital. You’re going to be born at home. After twelve hours of contractions, I spoke, too, with the baby in my womb: I’m going to bring you out now. No matter how much it may burn, I said to the other Adrianas.My vagina burst into flame when my baby’s head poked into this world. Push slowly, the midwife whispered to me. I pushed slowly, despite the burning fire, to keep the portal from tearing open, so that the child could enter slowly into its new reality. When he finally came out, when he arrived, the midwife laid him on top of me. My newborn son had his eyes open – a deep gaze from elsewhere that gave us goosebumps. First he looked at me, staring, and then at his dad. It is almost impossible to describe in words such an extreme moment in life. This new being arrived. From where? I don’t know. Suddenly, there was a new energy in the atmosphere.

In those two moment when the river of life converged with the river of death, when I approached the threshold of the unknown. I felt vulnerable, broken and alone. Longing for the support of someone or something to hold me in the midst of the desolation, I understood the value of a wordless embrace, of the hand, that held mine as I looked at the inert body of my dead mother, of the cathartic funeral chants that helped me cry, of the cups of warm cinnamon and rue tea, that calmed my wounded body after giving birth, of other people’s arms who carried my baby when mine had no strength left, of the luminous smile of my son able to cure even the darkest of distress, of the company of other women who, in the shade of a tree, were my accomplices, in this savage transmutation of becoming a mother.

We have a hard time feeling vulnerable. We resist it. We have a thousand forms of escapism at our disposal. Anesthesias to keep our feelings at bay. Perhaps if we spoke and shared the giddiness of life and death, we could begin to metamorphose into amore understanding and affective community, in which we grasp the importance of care at a deeper level.

That to be vulnerable is to be strong that in letting ourselves be carried away by affect we remember how much we care about our mother, our grandmother, our woman friend. That when we look inside ourselves, when we bear the abyss of feeling, we sink quickly to the bottom of the well, which ceases to feel so deep. It is then that we can cry until the emotion dissipates. We dry the tears from our eyes and then we feel, a bit stronger, a bit lighter, a bit more human. 

Adriana Ciudad 2024

Texto de sala por la curadora FLORENCIA PORTOCARRERO

“Nadie nace individuo: si alguien se convierte en individuo con el tiempo, no escapa a las condiciones fundamentales de dependencia en el curso de ese proceso… Todos, independientemente de nuestros puntos de vista políticos en el presente, nacemos en una condición de dependencia radical” (Butler, 2020).

Aunque desde la pandemia parece haberse extendido la conciencia de que somos seres esencialmente interdependientes y que necesitamos ser cuidados a lo largo de toda nuestra vida, seguimos habitando un mundo regido por lógicas mercantiles que ejercen una violencia sistémica y sistemática sobre los cuerpos feminizados en los que históricamente han recaído las tareas de preservar la vida, especialmente sobre aquellos que desempeñan estas labores de forma gratuita, como las madres.

A la artista peruano-alemana Adriana Ciudad le tocó comprender esta lección en carne propia desde muy joven, cuando su madre enfermó y tuvo que asumir el inesperado rol de cuidadora principal. Años más tarde, el nacimiento de su hijo la enfrentó nuevamente con la cruda falta de apoyo social que reciben quienes asumen estas tareas vitales. El río det odas las vidas es una exposición antológica que reúne cuatro proyectos enmarcados precisamente entre estos dos momentos cruciales en la biografía dela artista –el fallecimiento de su madre y su propia transformación en madre– yse propone  encontrar un lenguaje parahablar de los hilos invisibles que nos atraviesan y conectan.

El Proyecto Alabaos (2017-2018) gira entorno a las canciones y rituales fúnebres de las cantoras afrocolombianas de Timbiquí, en los que Adriana encontró una alternativa para sobreponerse a la pérdida de su madre y a la privatización del duelo en las sociedades modernas. 

Heridas y remedios (2022-2024) es una instalación que parte de la experiencia del puerperio de la artista y que tomala forma de un tendal de sábanas ensangrentadas, visibilizando la violentatransformación que experimenta el cuerpo recién parido, así como la importanciade las plantas medicinales para su recuperación. 

La revolución del afecto (2022) es una pieza de video en la que, a través de una metodología epistolar, Adriana y el artista Isaac Ernestoexploran sus lazos maternales y desnudan profundas heridas históricas. 

Finalmente, Sentir la propia sombra(2023-2024) reúne pinturas y poemas que ahondan sin vergüenza en lac onstelación de emociones ambivalentes, frecuentemente reprimidas y culpabilizantes, que atraviesan a las mujeres y otras identidades gestantes durante el embarazo y el arduo trabajo de la crianza.

El río de todas las vidas inscribe a Adriana en una genealogía de creadoras que entienden lo personal como político y el afecto como un espacio legítimo de producción de saber e interrogación social. La exhibición reivindica la experiencia encarnada de la maternidad y del trabajo de cuidado como fuentes de conocimiento creativo, señalando nuevos caminos posibles tanto para maternar como para producir arte.