Whitney Biennial 2017

Floor 1

Born 1981 in Los Angeles, CA
Lives in Los Angeles, CA

For the 2017 Biennial, Rafa Esparza built a rotunda out of adobe bricks made by hand from a combination of clay, horse dung, hay, and water from the Los Angeles River. Esparza’s gesture is a kind of mimicking of American colonization, but in reverse: while historically colonization progressed from east to west, imposing European structures on the land in the process, here Esparza has transformed land from Los Angeles into bricks and transported them to New York. The artist considers the dynamics involved in the labor of making the bricks an important part of the work. For previous projects, he worked alongside his father, who is trained in traditional adobe-making techniques. Here, however, Esparza worked with a group of Brown, queer-identified individuals—Rooster Cabrera, Maria Garcia, and Zena Zendejas—deepening a sense of community that also finds itself reflected in the generosity of the final installation: Esparza invited a number of artists to contribute works to the installation while keeping in mind the possibilities of this particular space, which holds none of the history of social and racial exclusions of a traditional museum gallery.