N.A.S.A.L. is pleased to announce its second participation in Arco Madid, Perfiles: Arte latinoamericano sector (Booth 9P01) with a solo presentation by Miguel Cinta Robles. This section is curated by José Esparza Chong Cuy.
This research focuses on the political and economic history of hard fibers from the agave family: henequen, ixtle, sisal, and pita. It asks how a material that was fundamental for textiles, ropes, and navigation evolved into a monoculture system for the mass production of mezcal in Oaxaca.
Two large cotton fabrics, dyed with fermented wood collected from the artist's family orchard, hold a visual archive that intertwines taxonomy and pre-Hispanic cosmogony, evangelization processes, haciendas, mining concessions, and dynamics that revolve around a material. The fabrics operate as an expanded codex where the fiber becomes a narrative and a surface for historical inscription. The research also unfolds in a series of sculptural gestures made with ixtle, a fiber from the espadín agave (Agave angustifolia), combined with steel, generating hybrid bodies that stretch the boundaries between the organic and the industrial.
These pieces are accompanied by wooden devices constructed from fragments collected from antique furniture and structures in a house in Veracruz. The paintings refer to display cases and cabinets of curiosities that incorporate engravings, inscriptions, and paper made from agave and earth, thus forming an exhibition system that reflects on the ways in which the museum classifies, contains, and produces meaning around the material.
Miguel Cinta Robles (b. Oaxaca, 1997) lives and works between Oaxaca and Mexico City. His practice explores the intersections of agriculture, science-fiction speculation, machine building, and land-based pedagogies, reflecting on the technification of rural spaces and their connection to the extractivist infrastructures sustaining the cloud. He is the founder of Domingo de Cerro and collaborates with Terreno Familiar, projects grounded in collective walking, agroecology, and community-based learning.
Hall 9, IFEMA Madrid - Stand 9P01
Avenida del Partenón, 5, 28042, Madrid