Respiros que se escapan a través de las grietas del tiempo; para arder, fluir, surgir y sostener)
At the core: a constellation of stone—lava boulders oriented to the pulse of the earth, drawn to the pull of the cardinal directions. These stones carry memory and ancient breath, vibrating with a low hum of geologic wisdom. Amézquita listens, aligns, and translates this energy. The stones become thresholds, transmitters, and oracles, connecting us to a world beneath and beyond.
Before ritual fire, the stones are gently washed with water—cleansed and awakened—preparing them to receive the fragrant smoke of burning copal. As the copal ignites, its tendrils weave through the air to cleanse and summon and cleanse, thinning veils between worlds.
Sound arises not just to be heard, but to be felt. Vocalist and sound artist Micaela Tobin shapes breath into incantation, blending voice, electronics, gesture, and object. Her soprano calls forth hidden truths, creating a bridge between flesh and spirit, between spoken word and felt experience. Together, Micaela’s voice and Amézquita’s gestures weave resistance, reclamation, and enchantment.
Amézquita moves with elemental precision: water washes over stone, tending and awakening it. Volcanic ash floats weightlessly, carrying the promise of cultivation and the quiet beginning of what is yet unseen. These gestures serve as offerings, transforming the space into a vessel and a ritual of becoming.
Tending the blaze, holding the ash; awakened by fire, held by water, 2025 (cuidando la llama, sosteniendo la ceniza; despertando por el fuego, abrazada por el agua)— the title of the live activation — invites an embodied ritual of transformation. Fire emerges—first as flicker, then as force—speaking in cycles of ignition, blaze, ember, and ash. In its heat, secrets surface; in its dying, renewal unfolds. Participants gather not as spectators, but as active participants in a shared stillness, a communion with ancestral memory. The flames unite rather than divide, calling everyone inward.
In the city’s concrete heart, this fire forms a hearth—a circle, a return. Ancestral knowing, communal rhythm, and sacred time converge here. The elements—heat, breath, stone, smoke, sound, and silence—come together in this space.
Amézquita’s work invokes presence. It reaches across the thresholds of the body and opens portals between worlds—the living, Xibalba, and the cosmos; present and past; self and ancestor. It remembers and listens.
This work stands as an axis, a compass, a ceremony. It creates space to hear the ongoing voice of the elements. It offers refuge through ritual. It reveals that fire holds the heat of endings and beginnings.
To enter this space is to engage in a reckoning. Here, the earth speaks—in smoke, flame, stone, and scream. We are called to listen. To feel. To release.
