An unmeasurable time and archive. Metallicmemories in El Dorado. Un Territorioy Estados nativos by Ximena Garrido-Lecca

Abstract

In certain contemporary art pieces, metals such as gold and copper are configured as carriers of stories and affections that transcend human epistemology. This article analyzes how these metals act as living archives in some of the pieces that make up the exhibition El Dorado. Un Territorio and in Ximena Garrido-Lecca’s exhibition Estados nativos. We will consider the notion of archive proposed by Georges Didi-Huberman —as a network of voids and heterogeneities— and its possible expansion towards a non-anthropocentric territory where trauma and affection resonate in the mineral, following Ann Cvetkovich. We will recover Walter Mignolo’s approach to minerals, where he vouches for not only a material restitution, but also an aesthetic and gnoseological re-emergence, intertwining resistance and transformation in the deep plot of its existence. And, mainly, we will start from Guadalupe Lucero’s reading of Garrido-Lecca’s work to reflect on how copper dreams of returning to its “native state”, while gold, loaded with sacred and colonial meanings, interweaves temporalities and memories that reflect the violence of extractivism. Ximena Garrido-Lecca’s aesthetic practices invite us to contemplate these materials as testimonies, destabilizing traditional human narratives.